A to Z Reflections

For this year’s Blogging from A to Z Challenge, I came up with the worst romance novel ever written in 26 days. Pandora’s Tacklebox, an epic (mis)adventure involving an intrepid multi-tasking hero (with muscles of iron, a beard like a god, and a bank account of legend) and his poor cursed mermaid girlfriend, was an effort to both entertain and educate about writing techniques. Visitors to the blog seemed to enjoy it a lot. I got such a big and positive response!

This was my second year doing the challenge. Last year I talked about writing too, though not as entertainingly. This year was a much more organized and focused effort, and took a lot more work. However, like last year, I started writing my posts in February so they were all ready to go by April. This turned out to be quite smart, as I ended up moving house in April. I surely wouldn’t have been able to write day by day in the midst of that chaos. I recommend to everyone to decide early in the year if you want to participate and write your posts well ahead of time–then you can cruise through April on autopilot!

I do admit, by about ‘S’ I was starting to burn out on the challenge, even with all my posts done. Each day I still had to promote the posts on Facebook, Twitter, and the like, visit other blogs, and answer my comments. Perhaps my burnout was just because I was living amongst towers of boxes at the time and trying to put all my ducks in a row so the actual move (which took place on April 30th) went smoothly. I was distracted a lot and it eventually felt kind of grueling to immerse myself in the challenge.

I met some new blogger friends this year though, and enjoyed the challenge overall. I got to participate in a few of the Twitter chats and that was fun.

Will I do it again next year? Of course! I looked forward to the challenge this year and couldn’t wait for it to get under way. Maybe next year I’ll try something a little less complex, though.

Check out the other reflection posts on the A to Z Challenge site!
Filed under: A to Z Challenge 2016, Pandora's Tacklebox Tagged: blog hop, blogging, creativity, writing