An eXploration of John #AtoZChallenge

The team decided our theme for this month's posts here would be a take "2020 visions of blogging." This set of weekday posts focuses on:

A 2020 Look at the A to Z Team

12 Writing Questions for 12 years of A to Z:

1.      Does writing energize or exhaust you?

Sometimes it energizes me, sometimes it exhausts me. A lot will depend on my mood when I'm writing. If I'm in a bad mood when I'm writing, it exhausts me. If I'm in a good mood, I can go all day.

2.      If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?

You don't have to get it right the first time. Leave yourself enough time to edit it.

3.      What was the best money you ever spent as a writer?

I'm not sure I've ever spent money as a writer.

4.      What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel?

"Flowers For Algernon" by Daniel Keyes. I don't remember how many times I read it when I was in high school, and I can't remember why I did, either.

5.      How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have?

None. I'm not an author per se. All my writing is done for the blog.

6.      What kind of research do you do, and how long do you spend researching before beginning a blog?

The posts that I do the most research for are the music ones. I may look up some interesting facts about a particular artist or song from Wikipedia (The Blogger's Best Friend), Allmusic, Discogs and artists' web pages. I'd say probably no more than an hour.

7.      What’s the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite sex?

Getting it right. It's why I don't do it anymore...

8.      How many hours a day do you write?

Typically about two hours. If it's going well, three to four.

9.      Have you read anything that made you think differently about fiction?

I don't especially care for fiction, in all honesty. I think the last novel I attempted to read was Janet Evanovich's most recent Stephanie Plum novel. I read a few chapters, put it down and haven't picked it up again. That was when I realized I was burned out on fiction.

10.   How do you select the names of your characters?

I don't have characters per se. when I'm writing a memory I'll use real names. If I need to give someone an alias, I might just use their first initial. When I'm telling stories on my brothers, I just refer to them as "my brother." They know when I'm talking about them, because they'll know the story. There have been one or two situations when I've used a full name as an alias, in which case I just pull it out of thin air.

11.   Do you read your book reviews? How do you deal with bad or good ones?

One of the beauties of not having written a book is not having to cope with reviews. I'll get comments on my blog, of course, and respond to as many as I can.

12.   What is your favorite childhood book?

There were several, but the one that immediately comes to mind is a collection of the works of Wilhelm Busch, author of "Max und Moritz" and other stories that were about evil children and how they get their comeuppance from adults. Busch wrote poetry in German, and the translation was beside the original text.

8 More Questions to round out to 20 (for 2020):

13.   Do you Google yourself?

I don't Google anything: I use DuckDuckGo as my search engine. ;) Having said that, I very occasionally will look myself up, just for a laugh.

14.   Are you usually early or late?

Since I'm handicapped, Mary does all the driving, and she is an inveterate early bird, so I'm almost always early.

15.   How often do you people watch?

Not as often as I used to. I spent so much time people watching in airports that I kind of burned out on it.

16.   What do you hope never changes?

My relationship with Mary. We've been married 42 years.

17.   What job would you be terrible at?

Given the troubles I have with my arm, paper hanger.

18.   What skill would you like to master?

Playing the chromatic harmonica.

19.   What takes up too much of your time?

Reading blogs. I think I follow too many.

20.   What’s the best way to start the day?

Waking up.

Do any of these answers resonate with you? Feel free to share in the comments!

Find John's blog here! 

  ~Jayden R. Vincente (adult fiction writer)

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We Ask Arlee Bird Twenty Questions #atozchallenge

The team decided our theme for this month's posts here would be a take "2020 visions of blogging." This set of weekday posts focuses on:

A 2020 Look at the A to Z Team

I sat down recently and asked Arlee Bird, who blogs at Tossing It Out and who is primarily responsible for starting the A to Z Challenge in 2009, twenty questions.

1. How long have you been blogging? Started in September of 2009 so that means 10 1/2 years so far.

2. How has your writing changed in that length of time? Stylistically I don't think my writing has changed much, but I think I've become lazier in my writing.

3. What percentage of bloggers who were around when you started are still blogging? In actual statistics I can't say for sure--many have gone or I have lost track of them. But to hazard a random guess I'm going to say at least 60% might still be blogging to some degree or another.

4. Are there any bloggers that you miss? Being forgetful as I tend to be, I can't come up with any names at the moment. The blogging relationships that I miss most are the ones who turned against me to some degree or another, became rude, and discontinued interaction with me. I guess that's a hazard of expressing opinions on my blog that some folks didn't like. Too bad--more their loss than mine I think.

5. How much time do you generally put into each of your posts? These days, lazy blogger that I've become, my typical post requires about 30 minutes or so. Most of my A to Z posts are whipped together in about 15 minutes I'd say. Actually I'm guessing on all of this since I never bother to time myself.

6. How much time do you spend replying to comments? The total depends on how many comments I get. Most of the time I'll spend less than a minute on a comment reply so since I get maybe 16 comments per post, I likely spend less than 15 minutes replying to comments--and maybe closer to 10 minutes total.

7. Does what you read affect your writing? How? I'm like a monkey. Or maybe a parrot. If I'm getting into reading something then it gets stylistically reflected in what I write. That is until I read some other style that inspires me. A lot of my writing shows the influence of Flannery O'Connor because she's one of my favorite writers. One fun thing I've had a tendency to do on those occasions that I get ambitious enough to write a book review is to write the review in the style of the book I've read. I've got a weird sense of humor I think.

8. Other than the blog, what writing do you do? About the only other writing I've been doing of late is songwriting. I've enjoyed writing songs for over 50 years now. Maybe someday I'll get one published. It'd be nice.

9. Which social media platforms are you active on? On which are you most active? I sometimes put posts of Facebook or Twitter--that's about it and not very often.

10. Will the kind of blogging you do still be around in 5-10 years? If we're all still here, I would guess that blogging will still be essentially the same as it is now. I've seen so many different kinds of blogs that I can see how filing a niche will likely always have some kind of interest level with others. Is there any such thing as a singular kind of blog? Gosh, it's been so long since I've explored the current blog world that I'd almost forgotten what weirdness I've found in blogs in past years. But then what is weird to me fills a niche for someone else.

11. How much TV do you watch? What do you like to watch? I watch a whole lot more now than I did when I first started blogging--probably 3-4 hours a day, sometimes more. I like to watch news/information type shows and documentaries when it's just me. If my wife is watching with me we watch mostly old movies on TCM. She probably gets annoyed with the old movies sometimes, but she'll usually tolerate them.

12. What was the last album (vinyl, cassette or download) you bought? At the end of 2017 I inherited my youngest brother's CD collection. He probably had at least a thousand CD's all in very good condition. A lot is music I like so I haven't really felt a need to look for more music. The last album I bought was I believe in summer of 2016 from a comic book and collectibles store in New Jersey. My youngest daughter had gotten into vinyl. I had no intent of buying anything until a ran across a like new live album by NJ band The Good Rats. I'd had the album on cassette back in the 80's and loved it.

13. When do you usually go to bed? Had to laugh since I'm writing these answers right before bedtime. Usually I go to bed about 11 PM. I find it very difficult to sleep more than 6 hours.

14. You were a juggler in your younger days. Do you still do it? Since you asked, my A to Z blog post talks about that. To directly answer your question, I think about juggling a lot--or should I say that maybe my mind thinks in a sort of juggling interpretation of life and the world around me--and I do keep three colorful juggling balls on our media shelf so, now and then, I can just pick them up to toss around a bit. Hmm--that wasn't very direct, but maybe there is something metaphorical to what I said.

15. What was the worst job you ever had? Maybe because my first actual job was working in my parents' juggling act, somehow appropriate work for me should also be fun. Or maybe I just tend to be a generally positive and optimistic person I've usually found something good about every job. However, one job that came to mind was my first job (outside the family act) when I was about 14. I signed on to become a golf caddie. It might make for a blog post in the future so I won't go into details, but I'll just say that I only went out once and then that was it.

16. Your bio on your site mentions two other blogs, "A Faraway View" about dreams and "A Few Words" for Sunday contemplation. They both appear dormant. Any chance you might reactivate them? There's always a chance which is way those blogs remain accessible to readers. There were a few years when I had all the blogs in the Challenge. I wasn't watching as much television then.

17. If you didn't blog, what would you do with the time? One thing I don't ever feel is being bored. There are so many things I'd like to do as well as things I need to do. It seems there is never enough time in a day. Sometimes I wonder how managed my own life when I was working.

18. Why did you decide to start blogging? At the beginning of 2009 my business branch shut down and the job hunt wasn't working out well. As I recall it was kind of a bad time--certainly for me jobwise. Then I started seeing this stuff about blogging being a way to riches. I started my blog. Maybe some people get rich with a blog--not me.

19. Your site says that you "won" NaNoWriMo in 2009 and 2010. What happened with the two novels you wrote? They're on my computer and various other places for safety. Waiting I guess--or just being stored.

20. If you had a chance to restart your life from a point in the past, where would you restart from? Why? Nothing would change in my life timeline, but it would be cool to travel back throughout time to visit. For me things have worked out pretty good and looking back it seems like I was a participant in some pretty interesting times.

Thanks, Arlee. If you have any questions for him, leave them in the comments!

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2020 Vision: The Old Shelter - Sarah Zama's author blog (#AtoZChallenge)

The team decided our theme for this month's posts here would be a take "2020 visions of blogging." This set of posts focuses on:

A Blog with 2020 Vision

Do you like historical fiction? How about historical fantasy? Are you excited to be living in the 20s again? How about escaping into the 1920s?

Sarah Zama is a long time participant of the A to Z Challenge with her blog called The Old Shelter. This is her sixth year joining us! Since as an author she works with the past - specifically, the 1920s - I thought she would be a perfect candidate for being featured in our "2020 Vision" series!

Sarah's challenge posts are always a delight to read. This year, her theme is Living in the Twenties! In the past she has done other themes related to her research work for historical fiction:

2015 - The Roaring Twenties
2016 - Jazz Age jazz: early jazz as a social phenomenon
2017 - 1940s film noir
2018 - The Weimar Republic
2019 - Berliner Cabaret

What I especially love about Sarah's posts is that they are extremely well researched and well organized. I always learn a lot from them. And what makes her an even better participant: she always visits back!

Sarah is an author who writes historical fantasy, focusing on the 1920s - or as she describes it, 1920s Dieselpunk Noir. It's history mixed with fantasy, and some fairy tale elements. If you want to find out more about her stories, follow this link!

If you haven't visited Sarah's blog yet, stop by and say hi to her!

You can also follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

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