Reflections on the A to Z of Goldendoodles

Well, April came and April went. Now it's time for some reflections on the April A to Z Blog Challenge. This is not my first year. In fact, it was my fourth year. But it was my first year where I did two blogs, this one for the Goldendoodles and flash fiction on my author blog.

This was also the first year the staff at A to Z tried using Google docs to master the beast of link signups. The first two years, they used LinkyList. Last year they tried another method that was so bad, I can't even remember how it worked. LOL!

So here is my take on the good, the bad and the ugly for 2018, both for my posts and the challenge overall. [NOTE: This post will be repeated on my author blog.]

THE GOOD:

• I prefer themes and easily set them for both my blogs and then participated in the theme reveal.
• I pre-wrote all 26 blog posts for this blog. I kept it simple, a little text and a several fun photos.
• I pre-wrote 65-75% of my blog posts for my writing blog.
• The Theme Reveal list helped me choose blogs to follow.
• Being able to add my blog links to the Daily List in advance was a HUGE advantage. I suspect I would have missed many days of posting as I often did last year.
• I managed to reply to EVERY comment left on both blogs. Phew!
• I visited the blogs of all my commenters, often adding them to my blog reader to follow.
• I commented on 60% of the blog posts I read.
• I checked out the blogs of commenters and found some new ones that way (not all were A-Z).
• I found way less folks who posted they were going to participate but didn't! Yay!!

THE BAD:

• I got sick in the middle of April. A nasty cold that hung on for weeks. I barely got the last three posts written in time. Phew!
• There were a couple of folks that didn't make it easy to find their blogs (from the comment profile). Hoping they will realize that and fix it. It's the one way folks find their way to the blogs if they don't have a direct link.
• Still not a fan of Google+ but I did join a group and post all my links there (and they post to my G+ profile automatically from Blogger).

THE UGLY:

• I really can't think of anything other than the personal time sacrifice - and I'm retired. LOL!

Would I do anything differently? Not much that I can think of. I would stick with writing in advance

What were my goals and did I accomplish them? My first goal was, and always is, to increase readership of my blog(s). I definitely did that as compared to last year where I had very few comments and no gain in readership. I also found some new blogs to follow, non-writing related blogs (of which I already follow too many). In addition, I gained a couple of new friends on Facebook, folks who had interesting blogs and got me invested in their lives.

My second goal was to get my writing mojo back. I was ready to retire from it and writing flash fiction re-ignited the fire. But, I still plan on taking a couple months off to read. It's been too long!

What's next? Well, this blog (our personal blog) will continue to be about our daily life as well as the life of the #2Doods. I hope you will continue to stick around for my ramblings and our meanderings. My author blog? TBD [to be determined]

Ciao for now!