Farewell A to Z - It's Been Fun! Reflections

Well, that's it, May is upon us and this is the end of the Blogging From A to Z April Challenge. 30 days of constant blogging, of searching out subjects, of deciding those subjects were interesting and then talking about them. Then of course, fitting in between all the writing the time to go and check out other people's blogs. I'm still doing that, there are so many that it will probably take me the rest of the year to check them all out. Still, I've found some interesting blogs that I've followed and some lovely people have started following me, or at least commented on some of my posts, letting me know I'm not just talking to myself ;).

Reflections
This was a really easy challenge to sign up to, just added my name to the list on the A to Z site and started writing. I do hope that list stays up, because I have a whole heap of folks I never got to, because there are so many people on the list and, as I said above, I want to carry on wandering around the blogs. I only had one 'interaction' disappointment - I had two blogs in this challenge, and when I found the same generic message from one person on both, which said nothing about the post itself, it gave me a big hint that they might be doing that to lots of people, and, well, I know there were a lot of folks to get round, but it would have been nice to know they'd actually read the post they were commenting on.

I think this challenge has helped me improve my blogging technique. I've been able to check out how other people do it, and jumping into other blogs blind has shown me how not to do it as well. Some blogs are well laid out, with easy to find background on the blog and the blogger, and easy links for following the blog by several mechanism. Others, well, some of them I couldn't even find a blog post about A to Z, let alone a follow icon! ;P I have actually begun adding menu items to my blog when seeing where it has been done well on others.

The advice from the A to Z team to pre-schedule posts was a really, really good one, because, despite having stacked up about 50% of my posts in advance, I wrote the final one the day before it was due to go out, because, whaddaya know, life gets in the way of a little thing like producing a blog post on 26 out of 30 days o.O.

Finally, in this reflections section, I just want to thank the A to Z Ambassadors who came round before and during the challenge, you really made me feel like I was part of something *hugs*! :D

So Feeling Accomplished?
In 26 posts, over 30 days, I really have bounced around a bit in my interests, from blogging about failure and how to embrace it all the way to xenoliths (and no, I didn't know what they were either until I was desperate for an interesting word beginning with X and they proved to be a rather good analogy for Alternative Universe fiction in fandom ;P). I'm also happy that I had a chance to test by fiction-writerly muscles, as I kicked off a new story, A Fork In The Road (The Hidden War #3), the first two parts of which are serialised in the A to Z under K is for Knowing and Q is for Questions, and I'll be continuing with part three very soon, once I've had a short breather ;).

I even hosted a stop on the blog tour of author, Kia Zi Shiru, who is promoting her Black Sheep Trilogy.

I ended up creating a list.ly list for all my posts so I could keep track of them and make sure I didn't repeat myself!

Well, congrats to everyone who 'survived' the A to Z, I hope we're all feeling accomplished. :) 

Keep blogging, keep interacting - I know I will!

(psst - seekrit admission, I even joined tumblr thanks to this blog hop, because one of the blogs I really liked, Coffintree Hill, is on there)

Sophie's Thoughts & Fumbles A to Z Challenge Posts

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