Well, now, here I am again for the last A to Z post for the year. The challenge organizers have asked us to write about the experience, make suggestions, things of that sort, so aside from what I’ve already posted about in my Victory post, here’s what I think.
In terms of the organizers, they did a great job. They emphasized everything I would have wanted them to as a participant, especially to the Blogger participants with the word verification, and having Name/URL turned on as a posting option. Now I have a Blogger account, but I don’t blog there. I blog here. (Thus, why you are seeing this post.) I didn’t always think to post my URL at the bottom of comments to those folks where I had to log in under my Google or Blogger account, so it was frustrating, as I’m sure those folks had a hard time finding my blog in return.
In terms of blog posts, I think everyone who didn’t fall off right at the start did a great job, of the sites I visited. Unfortunately I didn’t always have something to say (because just commenting, “Hey, great blog, come visit mine,” seemed too fake for my tastes, especially if I wasn’t into the content), so I visited lots of blogs I didn’t actually say anything at. Which was okay, because I saw a lot of people do that to me, too.
Of course, my posts were long. 500 word or less fiction isn’t my forte, apparently. Here are my word count stats:
- Total Words: 30,262
- Average Words Count: 1,164
- Lowest Word Count: S is for…separation, with 753 words
- Highest Word Count: Y is for…year, with 1,920 words
The only thing that disappointed me is how my comments fell off so sharply at the end, but this is a very minor disappointment. One, I know my theme of short stories not only want way off the recommended word count scale (already addressed), but also two, people don’t often read blogs for fiction, they read them for information. Heck, I find reading fiction on blogs disorienting, and often avoid it (although the Golden Rule works just as well for your writing as it does dictating how you should behave – do unto others, and all that). And three, my commenting also fell off sharply at the end, as did my enthusiasm for putting effort into writing my posts. I can only imagine the same happened to many, many others.
As for recommendations? For next year, I’d like the organizers to talk about the word count guideline earlier. I seemed to miss it until after I’d scheduled a few posts, and by then, I wasn’t going to switch and shorten anything. I’d also like to see the code for the navigation buttons to be less likely to bust my layout. Perhaps those buttons could be formatted as regular links? Because I loved them once I found them, but I couldn’t add them to my site (or rather, once I saw how they looked on my site, I needed to remove them).
It was a really great experience. I wish I had thought to do it last year, and I have great plans for my posts from this year. Mainly because of the topic I chose to explore, I’ve discovered many, many good things about myself and my writing abilities, and I can’t wait to do it again next year.
===
Oh, hai! I know you want to read all of my A to Z Challenge posts, now that you’ve heard what I wrote about. Enjoy the stories for free here on my blog. I’m preparing a collection with all of the stories included for consumption on your favorite e-reader, so you can always wait for that!






