My 2014 A-to-Z Blogging Challenge

We’re just a week away from the start of this year’s A-to-Z Blogging Challenge. The A-to-Z Challenge, or “Blogging from A to Z,” began in 2010, when Arlee Bird reached 200 followers on his blog and decided it would be a cool way to celebrate. Each challenge participant blogs every day, minus Sundays, for the entire month of April. Since there are 26 days in April (taking out Sundays), and 26 letters of the English alphabet, the challenge is to start with “A” on April 1, and finish with “Z” on April 30th, working consecutively through the alphabet, posting an article inspired by that day’s letter. The posts can be about anything, as long as they keep to the day’s letter. You could write an article on Aardvarks for day 1, Bilbo Baggins for day 2, Counterpoint in Contemporary Classical Concertos for day 3… you get the idea. To avoid cheating, the posts should be at least 100 words long.

This is my third year participating. A lot of people like to pick a theme, and run with that throughout the month. For the past few years, I’ve just posted articles on whatever comes to mind for that day’s letter. To spice things up a bit, I challenged myself to write a piece of letter-themed flash fiction every Monday. This year, I’m taking that challenge a step (or perhaps a leap) further: I’m posting flash fiction every day.

But I’m not simply posting flash fiction. As you may know, I enjoy Janet Reid‘s writing contests (HERE‘s an example of one–I think my entry got a special mention). These usually entail composing a piece of flash fiction of no more than 100 words, incorporating five words she has chosen. As a kind of homage to Janet, and to make this even more of a challenge, each piece of flash fiction I post will be no more than 100 words.

That’s not all. You may also know that I enjoy the YA Buccaneers “Walk the Plank” 200 word flash fiction challenges. One of the ways they like to add to the fun is to challenge participants to write exactly 200 words–no more, no less. As a nod to my YA pirate friends, each of my flash fiction pieces next month will be exactly 100 words long. No more. No less.

As you can imagine, with these restrictions, I can’t guarantee every story will be a masterpiece. Heck, I can’t guarantee any of them will be any good at all! But I hope you’ll stop by and check out my efforts.

It’s not too late to sign up for the A-to-Z Challenge. You can find the rules and the linky list (there are 1,575 participants signed up as of writing–that’s a lot of potential visitors to your blog!) at the A-to-Z Challenge site.

I hope to see you next week!