The Long And The Short Of It : A-Z Reflections

First off, keeping the music handy might help, in case you want to fortify yourself :) Because for all you know another mini-dissertation-length post is waiting...

Tadaa! Surprise! not quite. You pays no money, but you gets your choice! Take your pick -

The short version

The A-Z went list-free this year. I went poetry-free for the first time here. I wasn’t sure if I could swing it this time, but I did. 


List-free made no difference to the level of viewer activity on my individual A-Z posts, they remained roughly the same as last year. I know. I'm as baffled as you. It doesn't add up. But when do blogstats make any sense anyways? :) 


In the final analysis my takeaway seems to be, and not for the first time - lists and numbers are not the determinants of the fun that can be had at the Challenge. I had great fun this A-Z, as always. Happy to claim my fourth survivor badge. Congratulations to you too if you managed to complete the Challenge!

As the Arabs would say – ‘Kol sanaa wento tayyebeen, ya nas! Ashoofkum sana il gayi, nafs il waqt, nafs il makaan!’ (All year and you keep well, people! See you next year, same time, same place!)

or

The l-o-o-o-o-n-g version

My A-Z this year was different from last year, from any other year. Firstly, 2017 was always going to be a difficult year anyways, a weird combo of unavoidable surgery and school leaving exams and sundry horrid things like that. To make life more complicated, a series of awful events back in India turned the year ghastly early on. I was buffeted by continuous bad news from every side. In short, 2017 was on its way to become an annus horribilis on the personal front. I wasn’t sure I had the concentration to participate in the A-Z, and when I found it was going list-free - it was another uncertainty to contend with! But the A-Z in April is like plan A for me, has been for the last few years. Once I get a plan A going in my head, I don’t have enough head left to wrap it around a plan B. April without A-Z? How was that even possible?

Every event has its own lessons and its opportunities. And one of the opportunities was to change my approach to my own A-Z. Opt for something flexible instead of having to elaborately work things into poetry, which is what my A-Z themes have always been. So I did just that. 

So. How did the list-free bit go? In short, brilliantly! The whole A-Z felt tighter, neater to me. No dead links, no strident sales pitches, nothing that lowered the tone of the Challenge.  List-free made no difference to the level of viewer activity on my individual A-Z posts, they remained roughly the same as last year. Overall views here were nearly double that of April last year. The number of commenters also remained at similar levels as last year on a post to post basis, even though the total number of A-Z participants felt way lower this year. I know. I'm as baffled as you. It doesn't add up. But when do blogstats make any sense anyways? :) 

While I was quite sure from the start that I didn’t mind the two-second work it took to paste in my links, I do think they tended to get lost, maybe because I am not on Twitter, or prefer not to know the right end of a hashtag from the wrong one :) But as I said, it didn’t affect the views or comments as compared to 2016 when there was a list. Some people managed to land up from the A-Z page, some people came in from the FB links, more from FB than the A-Z blog, to my surprise. I should take FB more seriously :)

For my part, I reconnected with some old A-Z buddies, I found some cool new blogs, I read some awesome posts, learned a few new things both in reading and in researching for mine. I love the sense of community and camaraderie that happens during the A-Z for those who participate in the true spirit of the blogfest. 


The music that bloggers put up this year was a joy, Yvonne and Debbie, I’m looking at you :) and also Mary. I've listened to Debbie D's music more than once as I've gone around reading the other bloggers' A-Z posts. I've borrowed her idea of a playlist to keep the music I put up in one place. And the actual and fictional places some bloggers took me to, wow! - marvellous! (Hilary, Keith, Eva) and scary!  (Nick, Tamara, Arpan) 


The thought that bloggers put into their posts and the quality and variety were generally très magnifique (Hercule Poirotese can say it much better than plain English sometimes :)  I came away with ideas/tips for my writing. Oh, and book recos galore! (WordDreams, So Much to Choose From) And learnt a swathe of new stuff about 40's films (The Old Shelter). 


However, I didn't get around to as many blogs as in the previous years, this I think tops my personal teething problems of list-free. Last year I made it to over 25% of the linky list, but this year - my feeling is - no. I couldn't quite get to grips with visiting from the individual letter lists because of the time-zone/weekend differences. By the time all US/last time-zoners posted, my day was nearly over and it was time for the next letter, and going back to the previous day's posts was an impossibility given the returns and current letter visits I had to make. I think I managed to return the visits/comments of everyone who visited me. 

Some exceedingly kind A-Z participants read my overlong posts and did not tell me off.  They all have my gratitude.  (How do folks manage that 300 word limit? How?? I need to take a precis course or something!!)


Thanks also to the entire A-Z team for the huge work they do to keep the challenge fun for people like me, year after year. Some bloggers who I think of as dear friends were away from A-Z 2017 for various personal reasons, and I want to let them know they were missed! And some blogger friends who didn’t even participate were with me throughout for each post, however long. Thank you! - Elephant’s Child, Joanne, Martin Kloess and The Silver Fox, I cannot begin to articulate how much I appreciate it! 

To sum up, I wasn’t sure I could swing it this time, but I did - fistpump! In the final analysis, lists and numbers are not the determinants of the fun that can be had at the Challenge. I had great fun this A-Z, as always. Happy to claim my fourth survivor badge. Looking forward to the fifth already. Congratulations to you too if you managed to complete the Challenge!

As the Arabs would say – ‘Kol sanaa wento tayyebeen, ya nas! Ashoofkum sana il gayi, nafs il waqt, nafs il makaan!’ (All year and you keep well, people! See you next year, same time, same place!)

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2017 Reflections