A to Z Blog Challenge 2016 – a Reflection

Reflection of A to Z Challenge 2016

I have completed the 2016 A to Z Blog Challenge and I have to say it was fun. Choosing the theme I had, Life’s Choices/Life’s Changes, made it somewhat easier for me since I write about those things all of the time when I do write. My problem is that I don’t write as often as I should. The best thing that came out of the  A to Z Challenge was that it encouraged me to write more.

Once I decided on the theme, I started brainstorming a whole list of ideas that I could possibly write about for each letter. This was the original list I came up with:

A: Animals B: Breaks, Bill, Brother C: Cooking D: Dreams E: England

F: Fire Alarm, Father G: Genealogy H: Hair I: Instruments

J: Jewish K: Kazoos, knapsacks L: Lost, Leslie M: Mom, Marion

N: Neighbors O: Old P: Promoting oneself, Pet peeves Q: Quiet, Quotes

R: Raw Bits S: Stings/Stitches T: Teaching U: Understanding, Unfortunately

V: Versing W: Winter X: X-rays Y: Yelling Z: Zoo

I decided that I would write the blog entries in the order of the alphabet and do them as soon as I could, starting after the Theme reveal date: March 21st. Blogging on WordPress allowed me to schedule posts, so that I didn’t have to write and complete my writing on the day it was due. If I had to do it on the day it was due, I would never have completed it on time. For the most part, I was about 4-5 days ahead of the due date.

Some of my original brainstormed ideas worked for me, others, when I got to that letter didn’t inspire me at all. As I reached a letter that I had trouble with, I would ask friends, family, and colleagues for ideas, or I would pick up a dictionary and try to find a word that jumped out at me ( L for Library, Z for Zoom in, Zoom out). Then there were times that I was just in the right place or looking at the right thing at the right time (J for Journal, N for Noise). Sometimes it was just the people around me that inspired what I would choose (C for Christina, D for David, P for  Positive, Perseverance, Progress) or it just hit me out of the blue (X for Xanadu)

Here is the final list and links to all of the entries I made:

A:  Animal Speak, B: Oh Brother, C: Christina, D: David, E: England,

F: French, Foreign Languages, G: Genealogy, H: Hans Christian Andersen,

I: Uncle Itch, J: Journals, K: Keyboarding, Knapsacks, L: Library, M: Misheard,

N: Noise, O: Oops Plan, P: Positive, Perseverance, Progress, Q: Quiet Time,

R: Relax, S: Substitute Teaching, T: Teachable moment, U: Unity, V: Voices,

W: What do you want to be when you grow up?, X: Xanadu, Y: You’ve lost me,

Z: Zoom in, Zoom out

I did all of my writing on Google Docs. After looking at some other A to Z blogs I realized that my writing would look better with illustrations. Some pictures I used I had on my computer. Where I didn’t have pictures, I used Google Docs Research Tool to search out cartoons and images that went along with what I was writing.  After revising and checking over what I had written, I copied it to my WordPress blog, re-inserted the pictures, and scheduled my writing to post on the appropriate day at 7:00 in the morning.

I posted on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ each morning the link to my blog entries. I got about 20 – 40 hits each day. I probably could have gotten more. It wasn’t until the last few letters that I realized I should have used #AtoZChallenge on my Twitter posts and I didn’t take part in any of the Twitter discussions (I don’t use Twitter very often).

All in all, I learned a lot. I really enjoyed reading a number of the other blogger’s writings during this challenge. I hope some of you got something out of reading mine. I hope I can follow this up with writing more often. I’m definitely sure that I will do this again next year, but coming up with a theme could take time.