2018 A-to-Z Blogging Challenge Reflections
For this year’s A-to-Z Blogging Challenge, I fell back on a theme I’ve mined for the previous three challenges: 100-word flash stories (or pieces–not all of them are, strictly speaking, stories). Last time (2016) I drew my inspiration from Paul McCartney song titles. This year, to change things up and make it as challenging as possible, I did not schedule any posts. I wrote a story, and asked the readers for suggestions for the next day’s prompt. This meant I had only hours to come up with a new story every day.
And by the mighty hand of Providence, I did it. I’m not making any claim to the stories all being good (though I think there are a few good ones among them–e.g., Horrendously Hairy, and Vale of Tears), but I completed the challenge, and those who read them seemed to like them.
Here’s a complete list of all the stories:
| A: Above the Clouds | O: Octogenarian |
| B: Buttered Bread | P: Pansies |
| C: Cranky Crustacean | Q: Quirky |
| D: Double Dare | R: Reconnaissance |
| E: Eventide | S: Scarecrow |
| F: Fish and Chips | T: Tattletale |
| G: Gorgeous Gnome | U: Under My Umbrella |
| H: Horrendously Hairy | V: Vale of Tears |
| I: Ice | W: Wizard of Winter |
| J: Jockey | X: Xyster |
| K: Killer Tomatoes | Y: Yoga |
| L: Lost Horizon | Z: Zeppelin |
| M: Murdering Malcolm | |
| N: Now or Never |
This was a fun challenge. Not only was it was good practice for me, it encouraged me to see the variety of story ideas I was able to execute to varying degrees of success within a very short time limit.
Thanks to everyone who stopped by to read, encourage, and leave suggestions for prompts!
I like your idea of asking people for word prompts, I think I actually enjoy giving word prompts more than reading your stories, some to them are a bit morbid. anyway, I enjoyed reading them.
have a lovely day.
Ha! Thanks, lissa. I know the stories weren’t to everybody’s taste, and that’s to be expected. But I appreciate your contributions and your kind comments. Both were helpful and encouraging. 🙂
Congratulations for finishing the challenge! And I’m glad you decided to participate this year =)
Dena
Thanks, Dena! It was fun. I’m glad I did it. Thank you for your support and encouragement. 🙂
Colin, I think you did a fabulous job!! Having to write your posts on the fly during the challenge is tough but I really enjoyed reading the results.
Thank you so much, AJ! And thanks for your contributions and encouragement during the month. 🙂
Congratulation on congluding the challenge, and yours certainly was. I can’t imagine writing the posts the same day as writing them, without evenknow what I’ll blog about the day after. I’d go mad!
I read only a few of yoru stories during the challenge (it was a particularly busy month and I fell behind on so many blogs, which I’m so sorry about), but the few I read, I liked.
Good job!
Thank you, jazzfeathers! Sadly, I didn’t get to as many A-to-Z blogs as I planned, but I appreciate that you dropped in every so often. 🙂
I really enjoyed your A to Z and your flash fiction. I’ve been thinking of trying out writing some flash fiction and was wondering if you had any suggestions for resources (books/websites/etc.). Thanks!
Thank you, Liam! It was fun. 🙂 Resources for flash fiction? Hmmm… I think the best way to get into flash fiction is to read a lot of it, and practice. As I mentioned during the A-to-Z, flash fiction can take many forms. Some writers try solely to evoke an emotion, or a mood. Others try to write complete stories (as I did–or at least attempted to). My 100-word flash pieces were on the lower word count scale. Flash fiction can be anything up to 1000 words. Beyond that and you’re in short story territory.
Here are some places you can read (and submit) flash fiction:
https://101words.org/
https://thedrabble.wordpress.com/ (one of my stories was their featured piece for April 29th)
http://www.100wordstory.org/
https://zeroflash.org/
https://flashfictionmagazine.com/
http://flashfictiononline.com/main/
https://brilliantflashfictionmag.wordpress.com/
And I’m sure you’ll find many more via Google. Finally, I have to give a shout-out to literary agent Janet Reid’s periodic 100-word writing contests. That’s where I cut my flash teeth. If you go to her blog (http://jetreidliterary.blogspot.com) and hunt the archives you’ll find them. Janet’s comments on the stories are most instructive.