Reflections on the 2014 A-to-Z Challenge

Last Wednesday marked the end of the 2014 Blogging from A to Z Challenge. It’s the third year I’ve participated, and I think it was my most enjoyable. Instead of doing random posts, I went with a theme, and I made it one that would be challenging, creative, and also helpful to me as a writer: flash fiction. I wrote a piece of flash fiction for every day of the challenge. Further, I kept to a 100 word limit–exactly 100 words, no more, no less. I think this had the dual benefit of maintaining my interest, and also enabling people to read my posts quickly. There were over 2,000 blogs signed up for the challenge, and most people would be visiting multiple sites per day. I thought a good way to attract readers, and return readers, was to keep each story short and interesting. This is one reason why I didn’t stick with one particular genre. The stories encompass horror, romance, contemporary, fantasy, sci-fi, detective, as well as a range of age groups from middle grade to adult. Hopefully, something for everyone. I briefly considered making the stories all connect, so at the end of the challenge you’d have a 2,600 word story. In the end, I decided I wanted people to be able to drop in on the blog anytime and read something complete without feeling like they have to go back to “A” to get what the story’s about. Perhaps I underestimate people’s willingness to do that, but I figured they probably wouldn’t.

The hardest part of the challenge was visiting different blogs each day. Some days I managed to get around a number of blogs, others I only made it to my “regulars” (i.e., blogs from people I already follow, or ones I decided early on I wanted to follow for the duration of the challenge). There were a number of blogs I visited where the bloggers either did the first few letters then gave up, or ended up not participating at all. For the sake of supporting those who were trying to get to “Z”, I tended to avoid the blogs that abandoned the challenge (or never started it). However, given the large number of blogs on the sign-up, it was hard for the admins to keep the list “clean” so I would end up wasting time visiting blogs that were no longer participating. It would be nice in future if people had a way of removing themselves if they decide they no longer wish to participate.

So there are some of my thoughts from this year’s challenge. I fully intend to take part in the 2015 challenge, and perhaps even write flash fiction again. We’ll see. For those that are interested, I have compiled all my flash fiction posts from this year into a single pdf file, along with “author notes” for each story. You can find that HERE, or by selecting “Stories” under the “Writing” tab above.

Do you plan to do the A-to-Z Challenge next year? I’m also curious to know, if you read any of my flash stories, which was your favorite?