A to Z Recap

I heard about the A to Z Blogging Challenge about a week before it launched. It was the worst time for me to participate because:

1. I was finishing large scale revisions to my work in progress, Zone Trippers
2. I had to buy a new car which required research, spreadsheets and boat loads of money
3. I had to put on an elaborate Harry Potter birthday party for my son, and
4. My knuckles were swollen 3x their normal size

But I jumped in with both feet and didn’t miss a day!

What I Learned

• The key to success for me is public motivation. I never would have blogged 26 times in a month if I hadn’t publicly promised.
• I am capable of writing 500-600 words of copy a day ready for immediate consumption.
• I don’t have that much to say.
• My most popular blog posts were: Must Reads, Editing, Sexy, Cry and Doubt.
• I didn’t get to visit every one of the 1,200+ blogs that participated. But I did add several new blogs to my RSS feed.
• Finding something to say in the Comments section is harder than I thought. I don’t blame anyone who doesn’t comment.
• I will never give up my RSS feed. Mostly I followed the #atozchallenge hashtag on Twitter but I would conservatively guess that only 1/10th of the bloggers used Twitter regularly.
• Once again, I wish people understood that readability is important. Use headers, subheads, bullet points, etc. Large blocks of text are hard to read.
• My Mom read every day and often called me to see what the blog post was going to be about.

Takeaway

Gimmicks are my thing. NaNoWriMo, A to Z Blogging Challenge, the 3 Day Novel…. these things surround me with cheerleaders and accountability, which guarantees I will succeed.

I learned a lot and found some new friends. I still have a hard time seeing the automatic connection between blogging and growing a platform for a fiction book. So many bloggers write about the process of writing, which is interesting to me.. as a writer.

But as a reader, I just want to know more about the author’s world, their insight or occasionally their process. I am unsure how or if blogging will fit into my fiction writing.

What do you like to read in a blog written by a fiction writer?