Friday, May 3, 2013

Reflections on the A-Z Challenge


Melanie's Thoughts
First of all, whoever noticed that April could be divided into 26 days if you skipped Sundays was a genius. I love perfect coincidences like that. 

Second, I found a few really good blogs that I look forward to following for a long time. Our blog got quite a few new followers, some of whom leave really lovely comments. That makes me happy.

But the list of participants was crazy-long, and despite my best efforts, I didn't get to many of them. In the beginning, I tried, going to as many as I could, but that was no fun. And then I started getting comments on my personal blog (I don't think it happened on this one...) that proved that people were reading the title of my post, not the actual post. That was disheartening. I didn't want to be one of those people, so I slowed down--only commenting on the posts that I really wanted to comment on. That was better, but less people came to see my blog, so it was a trade off. 

I loved the out-of-the-box thinking it required to come up with blog posts. Especially because I was only responsible for 4 letters, it stayed fun, and I really love the posts we came up with. I having those extra parameters set gave our writing some sparkle.

My favorite Proser posts:
MaryAnn: T is for Toothless
Susan: O is for Out of Print
Sheena: G is for Growth
Trisha: L is for Lois Lowry
Sabrina: P is for Present Tense
and Me: K is for Kissing


Trisha's Thoughts
This was one of the coolest things I've done this year.  It was so much fun to see all the ways people used the letters of the alphabet.  On one blog, each letter inspired a poem.  Another featured a new comic book every day.  There were so many different themes, and I got a kick out of each of them.

As a Proser, I feel like we got off a little easy.  We split our month into six contributors, so to all those that tackled the whole thing themselves, bravo.  I don't know how you did it, because I'm pretty sure I'd have given up before we hit C.  Congrats everyone!

The only thing I'd like to see next year is a list of blogs organized by category.  I tried to stay focused on blogs that featured writing as their main theme, but it was hard to dig them out from the endless list.  (That might not have been a bad thing, though, since I uncovered a lot of cool pages just randomly clicking links.)

It was a lot of fun participating this year. I'm really glad we decided to do it, and I hope we give it a shot again next year.

MaryAnn's Thoughts
I was going to comment, but I decided to add my thoughts to the post instead (I hope that is okay Melanie).

I really enjoyed this challenge.  It was fun being involved in the blogging community.  I didn't read as many blogs that I wanted to, but I did find some real gems out there.  My favorite blogs were those that had a theme.  I found myself going back to them everyday, curious about what they would do for the next letter.

A few of my favorites were:  

Multicolored Diary which did a princess theme.  I never knew how many different princess fairy tales there are.

My Baffling Brain which did a mythology theme.  Got to love Greek mythology and all that tragedy. 

Jay Noel's blog who did the 80's theme.  Who doesn't love the eighties?


And of course I loved all the posts by my fellow Prosers. There is no one else I'd rather blog with.  You ladies rock!

3 comments:

  1. I participated this year for the 1st time. It was a lot of fun. I didn't have a theme, so I'm not sure whether I'd like the blogs to be separated by themes (I say only because you said to leave an opinion). It might leave even more blogs with less comments.

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    1. Ah, very true. I didn't consider that, and I think in the end, I enjoyed hopping through miscellaneous blogs here and there, so it's probably best to leave it as is. Great point, thanks for sharing it. :)

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  2. I'm so glad you had as much fun as I did with the A-Z Challenge. I agree with MaryAnn that the ladies that post here at the Prosers are amazing. I feel very lucky to have found myself here with you, by some serendipitous good fortune. (Is that redundant? Yeah, it is. Oh well.) Thank you for sharing the blogs you enjoyed. Somehow the only one I saw was Strands of Pattern, which I read regularly anyway. I'm excited to go check out the other three!

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