I was super pleased to complete my month of alphabetical posting for the challenge, although I didn’t actually complete my art project but have a foundation of sorts to build on when health and time allow. It was thoroughly exhausting but I also managed a mega-readathon of other participating blogs and was quite active commenting, although I had some lapses too where I relied on the lazy like button. I still have some reading visits to complete from my hop-lists and hope to find a few more during the road-trip (May 23rd on).
Looking back at my theme reveal post I note that I failed my aims on timing and word-count limit quite often. I didn’t manage to access all my past artworks so didn’t rely on those as much as I might have otherwise and I also didn’t spend as much time practising drawing as I’d hoped and didn’t get round to painting(!)
I didn’t promote my links on social media, as I simply didn’t have energy and preferred to maximise my blog-hopping rather than attracting new readers. I also didn’t comment or leave links at the main challenge site or the wordpress mirror site. Maybe next time I’ll work harder on blog promotion.
I really enjoyed finding new blogs to read, I just wish I could sustain the pace to continue reading as regularly!
I also wrote a companion series of A to Z Limericks at one of my other blogs: https://swishing4th.com/tag/a-to-z-limerick/ – I didn’t sign these up for the official challenge as I didn’t want the added pressure of a second blog in the challenge and wasn’t sure I’d achieve those posts within the timescale. As it was I posted a limerick every day without fail and so completed on 26th April, ahead of the A to Z schedule while I didn’t rest from my limericking on Sundays. It’s a shame there’s not a sign-up in afterthought list as I feel these would have had more popular appeal than my official posts here 🙂
So, I’ve completed the end survey and quickly scratching in my reflections post as I’d almost forgotten the deadline is today and as usual I’m nearing the final hour!
I’ve already found myself wondering about next year’s A to Z and have no doubt it’s a tremendous advantage to have posts at least pre-planned in outline, or better still, fully drafted, edited and scheduled. There’s nothing quite like writing on the day, but it only takes an internet outage or other such technical hitch to spoil your plans. Luckily I didn’t encounter any tech hitches during the challenge phase this time round. I do wonder my wifi glitching more recently is maybe my ISP imposing data limits to my over-priced previously unlimited internet since blog-hopping so intensely during April! Next year I might be on mobile internet only and have data limitations to take into consideration – I’d have ditched my home broadband already had it not been for planning to join in with the April A to Z. There must be plenty of bloggers who successfully manage the challenge with limitations of mobile internet – and I’ve seen and downloaded the wordpress desktop app and might give that a try ready to start planning for the 2019 A to Z Challenge! I’d hope to do it better next time…
All in all, it was a good blogging experience, quite a fun challenge and really enjoyable for the extra interaction and new encounters. Now I’ve been there, done it, but can’t say I got the T-shirt…
The Wishing Well 