Wednesday 9 May 2012

The good and the bad A-Z Challenge

A-Z Challenge

On the 1st April I entered the A-Z Blogging Challenge. The idea was to submit a blog post everyday starting with the letter A as the theme, then B and so forth. I am gutted that my blog has changed onto this new format and for some reason my scheduled post for yesterday did not work so my Z post went out on the first of May.
To complete the challenge we are asked to write a post about the experience, what we have gained, learnt from it etc.

The great bits
I have actually really enjoyed the challenge. I struggle for time to do anything at the moment and knowing I didn’t want to fail this challenge, I managed to find the time to write a post (almost) everyday.

I really enjoyed having to try and think up something to blog about beginning with the relevant letter and this led to a really diverse set of posts – instead of the normal family and everyday trivial posts I normally do, I wrote about all kinds of things from family, days out, travel, history, medical based posts, current topics and it opened a new way of blogging to me.

The challenged asked you try to visit at least 5 different blogs a day and although I didn’t manage 5 every day, some days I did 10 or more so on average I think I managed this. I have discovered a whole new set of blogs to follow, I discovered very different types of blogs and styles of writing and especially enjoyed it when I came across posts for the same subject and yet they were all so diverse.

I have gained about 20 new followers which for me is mega amounts and that in itself has given me a boost.

The not so great bits
These are niggles really – I found it quite annoying that I couldn’t go and visit everyone’s blog who came to mine as very few left their URL – it’s not something I do either but might change that now. As there were around 1900 entries it was impossible to find the relevant people – so if you did visit me and I never returned the favour, it’s not because I don’t want to.

Not everyone turned off word verification and I don’t think I did either (this is my lack of knowledge and the fact I struggled to get disque set up so was riled to muck around with it). I don’t mind the word verification but am I the only one who sometimes (often) struggles to actually make out what the letters actually are!?

I tried to visit some blogs which were private or not really participating. I found it a bit odd the private ones had signed up in the first place.

Would I do it again?
Yes I think I would.
So to the organizers, thank you very much for the chance to take part in this. I really enjoyed it, visited many new blogs and met and gained some lovely new people x

4 comments:

Sarah Mac said...

It's great to give yourself a challenge RP - I did a post a month in November and despite it being hard work at time I really enjoyed it.

Like you say, it makes you think, takes you out of your comfort zone a little and that's got to be a good thing in writing.

I've popped in to most of your posts even if I havn't left a comment.

I'm wondering if I should set myself some kind of challenge having fallen a little out of love with writing lately - it could be what I need.

I'm not a fan of word verification especially now blogger has made it 2 words and almost indecipherable.

I dont use it and can only recal a couple of occasions where spam has made it through to a post.

Well done on completing the challenge, I may join you if there's another. x

BNM said...

Just to let you know you don't have word verification on your disqus - I should know having setting it up for you. I think its a great challenge and need to do something similar but finding it hard to blog what with work being at maddest period at moment!

Jazzygal said...

Well done on completing the challenge and it does sound like a challenge with some positive outcomes :-)

xx Jazzy

cast29 said...

Congrats on finishing the Challenge, and if you learned something about yourself or your writing, then your participation was successful, I'd say.

Hope you'll drop by my blog when you can. I'll reciprocate.