Secondly a huge thank you to everyone who visited through April, and hello and welcome to my new followers, I hope you will stick around and enjoy the odd book review and other random stuff that make up this blog.
Thirdly a huge thank you to Monkey for kicking my butt and making me join in when I was trying to cry off at the last minute, and providing me with (most of) the random words for my flash fiction.
Rather like NaNoWriMo the A to Z provides a bit of external discipline and motivation that stops me sinking into 'I never achieve anything with my free time' mode, something that inevitably leads to even worse procrastination and more loitering on Facebook. I like the challenge because it gives me an excuse to do something different on my blog and gets me back into the random blog browsing that I did so much of when I first started blogging.
Each year I have tended to scroll down the signup list clicking on blogs; I go for quirky titles, or sometimes because they are labelled as book bloggers, or sometimes just utterly at random. I have found many interesting blogs this way and always add some to my follow list. I can't guarantee I'll visit all the time but I do go down my RSS and blogger feeds every day and visit a few, and always read the ones that arrive by email.
New blogs I have enjoyed this year:
The Weekend Baker and Jo on Food, My Travels and a Scent of Chocolate are both great foodie blogs. Fanny Barnes Thornton's A to Z was about quilts, but she writes about all sorts of stuff. Zombie Flamingos wrote about house renovations, but was picked as the best blog name. Dave Graham at espresso coco reviewed some excellent films and gets a mention for the unforgettable photo of Sean Connery he included in the last day. Shahira at The Word Trance did a most fascinating A to Z of English words that originated in Arabic, and confesses a love of language. K.L. and Catherine blog at Spirit of Children's Literature and introduced me to lots of books I had never come across as well as old favourites. Jenn Lost in Chaos and This Nomadic Life (anonymous expat blog) both just struck a chord with what they wrote about.
My only quibble with the challenge is the number of people who were signed up but did not join in. It must be hard to keep up with everyone on such a long list, and to be honest, I just leave again if a blogger is not posting and go to the next one. The wonderful enthusiasm of most of the participants makes up for the few who didn't bother.
It was a busy April, but May will be quiet; I am off on holiday in 7 days time so there will be a distinct lull in posts this month.
Congrats on completing the Challenge! I look forward to coming back to your blog for visits during the coming months. Have a great holiday...
ReplyDeleteExcellent post. Yes, it is a downer when people sign up for a hop and can't or don't take part. This is such a GREAT hop. Looks like you found a few gems. :)
ReplyDeleteStopping by after the #atozchallenge to check out your reflection post!
@JLenniDorner
This is a really thoughtful post. I participated daily but was discouraged by so very few comments.
ReplyDeleteI'm stopping by as go through A-to-Z reflections. Congratulations on finishing! I was also surprised at how many had signed up but I could not find an A-to-Z post on the blog. I wish I could have gotten to read more blogs during April--I'm going to try to hit some of them now that the challenge is over.
ReplyDeleteMary@ The View from my World
Congratulations on finishing the A-Z Challenge! I think the best part was finding some interesting blogs. Looks like you found some too, and it's so great of you to add them to this post. I'll have to remember that next time.
ReplyDeleteI blogged in secret for years, but I'm still new at making my blog public and learning all that goes along with it. As far as the number of people who drop out, I saw you've done the challenge before - do you think there are more than other years?
Enjoy your holiday and congrats on completing the challenge. I intend to return to this blog. http://www.writer-way.blogspot.com
ReplyDeleteHi Martine - the non-participants are a pain .. but that's people .. I know they're looking at trying to eliminate people before we set off on April 1st ..
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link across to a few blogs I don't know .. Jo and Fanny .. I know fairly well .. the Arabic one I'm interested in finding out more ..
Enjoy the holiday though .. cheers Hilary
Well done on completing the challenge. I was a last minute entry having debated back and forth about whether or not to participate and I'm so glad I did.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it's a bit of a shame when people end up not participating or dropping out but so many people do join in that it's still great fun.
Congrats on completing the challenge! I agree about with your frustration about the number of people who ended up not participating after signing up. I was a minion this year, and we tried to find those who weren't participating to remove them from the list. Thankfully, though, there were a ton of great bloggers who DID participate. It looks like you've found several new blogs to read.
ReplyDeleteTaMara @ Tales of a Pee Dee Mama