Well that’s another A to Z Challenge over. This has been my fourth year taking part on this blog and as always, it’s time for some reflecting on the challenge.
The Good
- This year, I took part in the challenge with two blogs – this one and my writing blog. I thought that would make the challenge a lot harder, but to be honest, it didn’t have that much effect because I had all of my posts scheduled on both blogs well ahead of April.
- I really enjoyed writing the posts for this theme. It was such fun revisiting some of my favourite books and authors, although “X” proved to be particularly tricky for my theme.
- As always, I found some blogs and visited some old favourites.
- Every year, I set myself the challenge of visiting every blog on the sign up list. I usually find I run out of steam mid way through April and it doesn’t happen. This year, I made a huge effort to get through them early in the month and I visited every blog on the list by April 13th.
- The amount of people leaving links in their comments was massively reduced this year.
The Bad
- I didn’t get even close to the amount of comments I left, but to be honest, I have found this to be the case every year, and no doubt when I read the reflections posts, as usual, there will be hundreds of bloggers saying they didn’t bother commenting on any of the other blogs.
- The blogs that make it so damned hard to comment and/or share their posts.
My Daily Visit List
As always, I try to find the blogs that particularly interest me during the theme reveal to visit daily. I usually have a list of about twenty blogs, but this often becomes unmanageable, so this year, I kept it to a much more realistic five blogs.
Those were:
- Patricia Lynne with a theme of new words and a flash fiction piece using each word
- Keith’s Ramblings with a theme of short children’s stories
- JR Vincente with a theme of fictional pieces written by a character who works in a sex shop
- Kohl Eyed Me with a theme of her favourite books
- Literary AU also with a theme of her favourite books
I thoroughly enjoyed the daily posts on all of these blogs.
Overall
Overall, I enjoyed the challenge, and I will definitely be back again next year. I’m already thinking up themes haha.
Did you take part in the A to Z Challenge? Let me know in the comments 🙂
You can find me here: My writing blog, Twitter Facebook Bloglovin Pinterest and Instagram Please do stop by and say hi!
Congrats on hitting all 600+ participants! I may have mentioned that it is impossible for me to “like” you posts as the button continuously says that it is “loading.” That may have prevented some people from leaving comments to you. I’m going to keep working my way through the list in the coming months.
Thank you 🙂
Yes, you did – I did try to turn it off, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference whether it’s on or off it just does its own thing lol
Mighty fine – you did so well – the pros outweigh the cons
Thank you 🙂 Yes, they do and I really do enjoy doing the challenge
Brilliant well done Debbie, I don’t think I could have kept up the pace. Hope you can have a bit of a well deserved rest now but knowing you, you’re probably happily busy, busy already!
Thank you 🙂 I tend to pre-write my posts so there’s not so much to do in April, but it’s still chaotic haha. You know me so well lol
Wow. That’s quite the achievement to visit everyone on the list. I’m glad you enjoyed my posts. I had quite a few people list me as a blog they enjoyed.
Sadly, this will be my last year doing the challenge. I don’t have the energy anymore for a month long hop (thanks chronic illnesses) and I really stuggled this year to visit and comment.
I loved your posts 🙂
Sad to hear you won’t be doing the challenge again but you have to put your health first obviously. Hope we still keep in touch
You visited everyone on the list? That’s huge. I’ve never managed to do that.
And yeah, not many do the whole hop portion of the challenge. I don’t know why. Congrats on making it through with two blogs.
I love the hop part – without that, I’m just writing posts and I do that anyway haha
Wow! Prewrote two blogs and read every blog! That is amazing. Congrats and all of your a-z successes
It seems I like to make things hard for myself haha. Thank you 🙂
Visiting everyone on the A to Z list can be hard work I have done this once I think back in 2014-15. But I found it just took too much time., So Well done for doing that.
And thanks for visiting. I am not really part of any Blog community except the A to Z. Although my blog may appear a bit mad at times to folk it is in fact my diary and memory. Useful to me but I suspect rather boring to most other folk. So I am always amazed when folk turn up. and I always leave a reply and always visit there blog to say thanks (I hope?). I must admit I had neglected my poor old blog in the last couple of years but I am back . . . for now . . . thanks to the A to Z.
It did take a lot of time and I probably won’t do it again, but it was something I wanted to do just to prove to myself I could do it.
It’s fab that the challenge has got you back into blogging 🙂
Well, you visited and commented on my Truck A-Z.
Thanks!
Did you see the shoe patterns too?
I don’t know HOW you managed to visit every blog on the list. Massive achievement! Kudos!
Like Janet, your “Like” button is “still loading…”
Slow and feeble internet connection here at the day job.
I did see your shoe patterns, I thought they were fab (I didn’t realise that both blogs were yours though).
I’ve given up on my like button. It won’t work or go away lol
Hi Deborah
Thanks for stopping by yesterday. I’m quite impressed with your line up of published work. Also your commitment to reading so many bloggers. Great job!
Thank you 🙂
You had two blogs running in the challenge PLUS visited every blog on the list? That seems like a superpower! Amazing!
Congratulations!
I have a question… you listed “the amount of people leaving links in their comments was massively reduced” as a good thing. I didn’t leave links this year because I heard some bloggers don’t like that, but I’m still unclear as to why. I was thinking I should return to leaving links next year but now, after reading this, I’m wondering if I should or shouldn’t.
Thank you! I think it was more super crazy than a super power haha!
With the links in comments, Google see it as spam and it can affect ranks for both the person leaving the link and the person whose blog it’s on. I wouldn’t recommend going back to doing it for that reason, plus a lot of bloggers just delete comments with links in (I tend to edit them and remove the links if the rest of the comment is genuine). Plus to be honest, it’s unnecessary as long as you pop your link in the official box when you leave your comment as the blog owner still can visit you that way.
Good to know! Thanks for explaining that!
No worries 🙂
Wow! Visiting blogs of so many participants! I couldn’t manage even 2% of it.
I’m going to start early next year (now that I know when the challenge starts and how it goes).
Amazing!
Having posts pre-written definitely helps 🙂