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Sunday, May 5, 2019

A to Z Reflections


First of all, a HUGE thank you to all those who took time to stop by to read and comment. It was much appreciated. I personally know how difficult it was to write and keep up with all the blog posts.

This is my fifth year and fourth time writing flash fiction. Last year I not only wrote flash but did a personal theme of the A to Z of Goldendoodles, so guess that makes six times writing for A-Z. Each time I've used a different method to chose words for my flash fiction stories but the key was always the photos I found to help my creativity. The visual image always helps me with finding a story line I like.


This time around was no different, well,  except the words seemed more mundane. I had also given myself the restriction of 300 words and sometimes that was tough. But personal life also made it tough this year. Too much real life and too little time. I had a wonderful mini-vacation at Disney in Florida from April 1-5, then was slammed with family medical issues with six different family members. Everyone is healing, not to worry, but it impacted my productivity big time.

What else was different? I had way less visitors this time around, and thus a LOT less comments. I followed and commented on over thirty blogs and maybe a dozen came back and commented on mine regularly. Another half dozen might have made one comment in exchange for my visit and comment. Previous years have seen dozens of commenters, in fact, it was rare that a return visit wasn't given. This year, it seemed to be more the norm, even for blogs where I commented on multiple posts.

All in all, it has been an underwhelming experience compared to previous years and I suspect this will be my final year.

But again, thank you to ALL those who took time out of their busy schedules to visit. I hope you fared well in your endeavor this year.

11 comments:

  1. I hope you reconsider not joining again next year. I really enjoyed your stories! I did also feel that I had fewer new commenters, but I think that perhaps I didn't seek out as many new ones either. I am going to try to visit more in the road trip.

    Janet’s Smiles

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    1. I often end up changing my mind at the last minute...time will tell. Some of it will depend on my getting some new books written and published this year and seeing how they are received. The older I get, the less time I seem to feel I have to do what I love. Thank you!

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  2. I think it was 2014 or 2015 I visited every blog doing the A to Z and there were about 2000 doing it back then. I didn't comment on them all or I would probably still be writing comments now. And that is the crunch really. It is great to get visitors and interact, but at the end of the day it is incredibly time consuming. So now I try to respond to regular visitors (and thanks for being one on the A to Z) but mainly just enjoy my humble little blog. And hope that visitors enjoy their visit and leave with a smile.

    If you can do stay with the A to Z it can be frustrating, but it can be enjoyable even if no one visits. Which has happened to me in the past when I have done the A to Z in July or the like just for the hell of it. It is a great exercise to focus the mind and give blogs a bit of structure. . .

    I hope your family are recovering well


    Right I feel a cup of tea is due . . .



    Rob Z Tobor

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    1. Hey Rob, deleted the previous comment I posted. I'm sort of on medical overload and replied in the wrong place. LOL! My head is spinning...but thanks so much for hanging in there!!

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  3. While there doesn’t seem to be as much interest as it did when I began in 2016, I enjoy writing my topics for myself. If you enjoy writing- keep writing.

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    1. I vacillate - right now I hate writing and would rather be reading. Sigh...LOL!

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  4. Hi Donna, Thanks you for the time you visited by blog and commented. It was most appreciated. I had lots of issues commenting back this time and while I cannot remember if your blog had issues the number of times I types up a comment related to the post and published it for to disappear became so frustrating that there was a lot of swearing going on. Anyway I can understand why you might drop out next year and spend the time writing at your own leisure. Regards Fran

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    1. PS sorry about the typos. I did not check my comment - still annoyed by the frustrating April I had with comments and just wanted it to post.

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    2. I feel your frustration....I find I don't do comments when I'm reading on my iPad, too many typos. So I wait until I get on my laptop and thus some comments either never get made or are late. But hey, all are appreciated, right? ;)

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  5. I'm so sorry to discover your blog only today (thanks to the Road Trip), and as I didn't knew about the AtoZ FB page, I know I haven't visit as many blogs I wanted to during the Challenge. I'm used to follow linky parties from a blog post, so I followed commenters from AtoZ blog (and mine of course), but I never thought about FB or even Twitter :(

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    1. I’m glad you discovered it, hope you will continue visiting!

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