A to Z Challenge Blog 2019
A Whiplash Reflection
Having challenged myself in the past 3 years to write about one topic for each letter of the theme I chose for the A to Z Challenge, this year I made it more difficult. I would write about multiple topics for each letter. The theme was Whiplash! Defined as: An injury to the neck caused by an abrupt jerking motion of the head, either backward or forward; And in the case of writing or speaking, caused by a rapid change of topic without prior notice.
It was inspired by my conversations with a co-worker who complained that I was giving her whiplash every time I changed the topic of a subject we were in conversation about. “Whiplash” became the cue word that I would use to prepare her for a change in topic I was going to throw at her.
Similar to the previous challenges I brainstormed with my family, friends, and students for ideas that I could include in each of my writing pieces. When I got to that letter, if I wasn’t satisfied with the choices I had made, I would resort to the Oxford Universal Dictionary ©1955 for more ideas. For each letter, I had about 4-6 ideas to choose from. I settled for 2-3 for each piece.
What was fun this time was that I could vary the style of writing that I used. For the most part all the pieces involved narratives or opinion pieces on whatever word I was using to write about. But there were times where I played with writing fictional stories. Check out E, U, & Z for those. I also tried my hand at poetry. Check out H, K, & Q for those. For H, in particular, I just felt like taking a break from thoughtful writing and played with using limericks as my overall genre.
Here are all the final topics that I chose for this year with a link to get you directly to those entries if you’re interested:
A: anger, advice, aging /B: books, birthdays, binge watching /C: computer updates, cablevision, conundrum /D: Darwin awards, data, dreams /E: energy, endings, exercise /F: French, forgetting /G: garbage, German, grammar, Grimm Brothers /H: hiccups, hair, honey /I: ideas, imagination, ice cream /J: junk food, jury of your peers, journals /K: kitchens, kindergarten, Krona L: laughing, languages, listening M: mysteries, mistakes, memory N: nonsense /O: organization,, opinions, optimist /P: podcasts, photos, passwords /Q: “Q” words, quotes, quiet R: relatives, rumors, rules /S: screen time, sleep, schedules /T: television, time /U: unicycles, unique, unusual V: vanilla extract, vision, visitors W: worries, double letters, water /X: xenophobia, X-words /Y: yelling, yesterday, yield /Z: zoos, zero, zap, zen
Again as in the past once the pieces were written, I spent a lot of time trying to find cartoons and graphics to fit what I wrote about. I was able to keep about 2 days ahead of myself throughout the month which made being on time with my posts doable. There were a number of days in which I would write 2 entries on the same day, just to stay ahead. Having Sunday’s off also helped.
I used Google Docs to write all the posts and WordPress to post them. I scheduled each post to publish at 10 minutes after midnight each day. When I woke up in the morning, I would cut and paste the published URL into Facebook (both the A to Z Challenge group and my own timeline), Twitter and LinkedIn.
Being so tied up in writing, I didn’t get a chance to read many other people’s blogs, but again hope to do so as the year goes on. I bookmarked a few blogs from other participants. I didn’t get many comments on my blog entries. Thank you for those that did comment.
There were 2 blogs in particular that I followed throughout the month. Zalka Csenge Virág’s The Multicolored Diary and Stuart Nager’s Tale Spinning – A Car in the Woods. I would highly recommend them.
I’m looking forward to next year when I try my fifth A to Z Challenge. I’m not sure where I’m going to go with it, Possibly fiction or maybe poetry. I enjoyed using those styles of writing this year. Till then…Whiplash!
