Monday, May 9, 2016

A to Z Challenge 2016 Reflections

 
 
            It is time to reflect upon the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. This year my theme was Classical Music. I was looking through my notes of reflections and I decided to pull up my reflections post from last year. This is my second year to participate in the challenge and the things I wrote about connecting with the blogging community still apply this year. The main difference is that this time I knew what I was getting into and had somewhat of a plan of setting time aside each night for comments. What I did not anticipate was my incomplete posts. I am a procrastinator the majority of the time, and only a few of my letters were finished more than one day before they were due. I will say that it was not a total procrastination, because I had all of my composers picked out by the beginning of March with a few facts I already knew. And I had all of my featured videos picked out and saved in a playlist. I still had to arrange my posts and do a little research for extra facts on the composers for most of the letters. Early on in April, I mentioned something about an elaborate idea for next year’s challenge. I must declare now that I will not carry out that idea unless I have all the posts ready by sign up time! Otherwise, I think I might go simple next year if I participate.
            Beyond the post writing, I enjoyed making visits and comments a lot more this year. I understood more about engaging with the community and I connected with some new blogging friends, which makes the experience worth the effort. I did notice something that I have seen before but never fully understood its purpose until now. Many blogs include a blogroll of some of their favorite bloggers, and I noticed some people utilized the blogroll specifically for A to Z themes they liked. That is an excellent idea! I think I will get that set up so I can try it out on my blog.
            I want to say a big thank you for all of my friends and fellow bloggers who followed my theme this year. I learned a lot about the composers just like many of you did. Many of them lived interesting lives, and I am most surprised by the number of composers who did not reach the age of 40. Before my research, I only knew of Franz Schubert because I had heard about his “Unfinished” symphony. It turns out that many composers left works unfinished or lost, and it does make me wonder what more they could have come up with if they had lived full lives. I also want to thank those who left words of encouragement and my two best friends who provided their support via texts. It was a fun month, but I am glad that we have reached the month of May! I will be taking a short blogging break for a couple weeks. I do plan to visit some of your posts and I’m hoping to concentrate on some writing during my “time off.” If you missed my theme during the challenge, I have all of my posts and my video playlist set up on the A to Z Challenge 2016 page. I hope everyone has a great month and congratulations to those who completed the A to Z Challenge!
 

37 comments:

  1. I did enjoy your theme this year! Glad you made the time to connect to other bloggers; I think visiting and commenting is such a key to a successful challenge. I always pick up great blogs to follow afterwards. What worked for me to be prepared with posts is I made an effort to write at least 1-2 posts daily in March so by April they were all done except for a tweaking or two that I did nightly before I posted the letter for the next day.

    Hope you participate in the challenge next year!

    betty

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    1. Betty, that was my initial plan, but my procrastinating self kept saying that I still have time. Then it came down to the last week in March and I realized that time had run out. At least I did have all 26 posts started with tags, titles, and letters added in before the challenge. I do hope to participate next year, we'll see about how elaborate my posts are...

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    1. Thanks Denise! I'm looking forward to it, but I'll be back here in no time :)

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  3. It was sad how many of them died young.
    A lot of research! Yes, if you do go big next year, have them all prepared ahead of time. Trust me on that one.
    Enjoy your break!

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    1. Thanks Alex, I really need to work on that whole planning thing...

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  4. Congrats on making it through and coming up with such informative posts. I need to plan ahead next year as well.

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    1. Thanks Tamara, your posts were very informative as well. I enjoyed reading them.

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  5. You did a great job! We'll leave the light on for ya:)

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  6. Doing a blogroll for themes they liked...that really is an excellent idea! I need to remember that for next year.

    Congrats on finishing! :)

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    1. Thanks Chrys! I'm glad I came across those A to Z blogrolls.

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  7. Wow, you finished those posts the day of?!? Yeah, it helps to have things planned out in advance, but those posts contained a lot. Good idea to have things planned out early. I hope you can get that done.

    Enjoy your blogging break.

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  8. Liz, yes, the majority of my posts were finished the night before each letter day. I may be a procrastinator, but that doesn't mean I'm not good at my job, just ask my college professors ;) It was just exhausting and limited my comment time, so I will try to get ahead of schedule by next year!

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  9. I enjoyed your posts when I stopped by. It's so interesting to see the person behind the musical geniuses.

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    1. Thanks Susan, researching the composers was educational and interesting for me.

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  10. I really enjoyed your posts since I love classical music and I read about their lives when I was a kid. My mom has a 2 volume set about the lives of the composers. Wagner was quite interesting and wild. Beethoven was a stubborn romantic genius and Verdi had a nice life overall. Like forward to your posts

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    1. Thank you, Birgit, I'm glad you enjoyed :) I was familiar with most of their music, but I definitely learned a lot about the interesting lives of these composers in my research.

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  11. Congratulations on completing another Challenge and thank you for sharing your Reflections with us. You picked a topic that is very dear to me as I love classical music.

    I started my blog roll during the first Challenge I did in order to keep track of the participants. Now the list is too big to have everyone up there and over the years my original list dwindled due to many bloggers who had stopped blogging.

    You did a great job this year!

    Arlee Bird
    A to Z Challenge Co-host
    Tossing It Out

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    1. Thanks Arlee! I have grown to love classical music over the past few years, and this was a really fun theme to do.

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  12. Congrats on finishing! I enjoyed meeting you during the challenge.

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    1. Thanks Lissa! It was nice meeting you, too.

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  13. I need to pay more attention to the blogroll! Yes, I guess a lot of participants don't understand that the point is to read other blogs? Interesting! I'm actually not participating again because too few people read other blogs...so it does cause people to abandon the challenge. I know people who won't even do blog hops at all because they've just found that it doesn't bring them new readers and it's a lot of work.

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    1. Stephanie, I remember when I first participated last year and I had never been a part of a blogging community before. My goal in participating was just to write everyday, but then I realized there was more to blogging than that. I was very hesitant about commenting at first, but when I started getting a couple people who visited everyday I started to catch on. It certainly was an excellent crash course on commenting/visiting other blogs for me. Like you said, I guess not everyone understands that concept.

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  14. Stephanie, it is a lot of work as I am just finding out. Also I'm not sure what is the best help for blogs I visit. Obvs I leave a comment. Since I'm a Google fan, I join the blog via Google groups or whatever it is for those that have that option. I follow them on FB and Twitter if they make it easy for me. But I stumble a little when deciding whether to follow the blog, or sign up for their email list. If I understand correctly, following the blog will send me an email containing the latest blog post in its entirety. Joining the email list will get me an occasional newsletter, but not necessarily the latest blog post. I quit using Feedly due to the torrent of info, but I can resume that if it is the best way to support the blogger. Show of hands, which is preferred?

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    1. Lissa, like you, I use a variety. Most of the blogs I follow are through the Google Friend Connect and their latest posts show up in a reading list on my Blogger home page. If they don't have Google Friend Connect, I try to find them on Bloglovin', Feedly, or Networked Blogs. I noticed last week that those blogs I wanted to follow are all on Google+, so that is why I fixed up my Google+ page. If I see a FB page, I usually connect through my page also.

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    2. Yes the Google Friend Connect is the one I meant, not groups as I said. I read that it was discontinued in 2012, but I saw it on several blogs and was able to join the Friend Connect group for that blog no problem. I'll check and see if they still offer it as a widget.

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  15. I had all my posts pre-scheduled this year, but then I came up with the not so bright idea of doing the final draft of my novel through April so I was still massively pushed for time! Next year, I'm clearing my schedule completely :)
    Debbie

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    1. Debbie, a final draft and A to Z? Wow! I can not imagine trying to balance that out. I hope you get to take it easy this month :)

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  16. I enjoy the A-Z Challenge-next year I will try to have it all organized! Cheers and thanks for your visiting me all through the year!

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    1. Kathe, thanks for visiting me during the A to Z this year and sorry for my delayed response to your comment. I took my blogging break very literally this month!

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  17. This was by far the easiest Challenge I ever took part in, simply because I pre-scheduled all of my posts.

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    1. Misha, I have said it before and I will say it again as a constant reminder to myself. I need to preschedule my posts next year, I must not give in to procrastination!

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  18. Your theme this year was one of the most interesting themes I have ever seen in the A-Z :)

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    1. Thank you! I really enjoyed researching the lives of those composers. It was an educational experience :)

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  19. Without the #Challenge how would I have found your blog to follow.? Love the experience again this year. Enjoyed your classical music theme. See you along the way this summer.

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    1. Thanks Stepheny! It was nice to get to meet you and see some lovely hotels in your challenge theme.

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