2016 A to Z Reflection
Another year of the A to Z Challenge is over. And now it's time to reflect back.
First, I just wanted to congratulate everyone who completed the April A to Z Challenge this year. This was my second year participating in the challenge. For my reflection, I am going to compare and contrast between what I learned last year and how I incorporated into the challenge this year. I am only discussing two main things.
Choosing a Theme
Last year, I chose to not have a theme and essentially just went with the flow. This year, I decided to have a theme so I could have an easier time staying on track. After the challenge finished last year, I started thinking about what theme I wanted to use this year. Although I had several ideas in mind, I decided to do it on books. On this blog, I write a lot of book reviews and I thought it would be fun to share some of my favorite books. I chose to feature one classic book each day of the challenge and for an added measure, to include some of my favorite book through the years. It was fun to look back and recall those stories again. For the classics, I have not read all of the ones I posted. Doing it though made me discover some new classics that I never heard of before. For me, it was definitely easier having a theme, as supposed to not having one.
Scheduling Posts
Last year, I wrote the posts either the night before or the day of whatever letter it happened to be. The main issue I had with that was I didn't have a lot of time to visit other blogs. Another issue I had was that I would stress out about getting the posts out on time and it became more like work.
This year, I decided to pre-write the posts and schedule them ahead of time. I actually figured out how to do that after reading it on someone's reflection post last year. I managed to do some of the posts at the end of March, knowing that I was going to be busy and out of town the first few days of the challenge. During the first full week of April, I got the rest of the posts written and scheduled. Doing it this way did give me more time to visit other blogs and enjoy the challenge more. If I somehow got behind on the visiting, I made up for it on Saturday or Sunday.
Looking Ahead to Next Year
I'm not saying that I have a theme picked out already for next year's challenge already, but I do have some ideas in mind.
For starters, I am most likely going to be doing the A to Z Challenge on both of my blogs next year. And be choosing a different theme for each. I realize it might be a little harder and time consuming, but I think I will be able to handle it.
Today, I'm starting a personal writing series on my other blog if anyone's interested. You can check it out here on Writing with Meg.
♥Meg♥
Congrats on completing A-Z! It's awesome that you were able to start in March and get everything ready and written by the beginning of April knowing that you would be out of town and busy! I also picked a theme for the first time this year and, between that and scheduling posts, it did make participating in A-Z more fun. Still tiring though! I can't believe you've already started another series! But I guess, since your posts were done by April, you have had some time to relax since your last post was written.
ReplyDeleteThanks Mandy!~Meg
DeleteCongrats on making it through. Most people seem to like themes. Glad it worked out for you. Learning to schedule posts ahead was one of the greatest things I learned. I do that year round.
ReplyDeleteThanks Liz! Yea, I got to remind myself to do that year round. ~Meg
DeleteCongrats!! Scheduling posts is the only way to go. I always have great intentions though reality sometimes falls short. Good luck next year!
ReplyDeleteThanks Sorchia! I'm the same way, so the scheduling really worked for me this year. ~Meg
DeleteYou learned the right lessons last year that I learned this year. If I do this again I will def prepare as many posts as possible in advance.
ReplyDeleteThanks Lissa! It's much easier the way I did it this year. ~Meg
DeleteThis was my 2nd year too and I did the same as you - last year I had no theme and write the posts as they were due and this year I had a theme and I had all my posts scheduled before April started. I much preferred the second way :)
ReplyDeleteDebbie
So did I! ~Meg
DeleteFinally catching up with your reflection and appreciate that you too continue to learn while participating in the #Challenge. The whole experience (4 years) continues to be positive. I have learned as much from some of the bad blogs as the great. Looking forward to continuing to follow you.
ReplyDelete