Reflections on the A2Z Challenge 2021

On April 1st, my partner and I were travelling back to England having spent the winter hiding from Covid 19 in Crete, next door to her sister. Naturally, I had prepared my first post of the challenge so that I had only to press the button before we set off a 3.30 in the morning! I didn’t realise, until the next day when we were hunkering down for ten days quarantine, that although I was on the Masterlist for Theme Reveal, I had not signed up again for the A2Z itself, so quick action needed to be on track!

My aim this year was to try and finish a science or speculative fiction novel that I had started some years ago and which had been languishing for lack of writing. I intended to publish a post around the novel and its themes each data, followed by a chapter of the book. I had 13.5 chapters finished at the outset and some six or seven post pieces. I vainly thought that this head start might allow me to achieve more chapters and to be fair I have 15 completed, but I hadn’t counted on pressure from the day job and also, writing the majority of the posts on the fly is a feat in itself.

I awoke anywhere between 5.30am and 7am and wrote, published and publicised until 9 am before turning to other work and although it didn’t leave time to complete the novel, many ideas were developed, encouragement received and other writers’ ideas investigated and so, overall, I feel that the whole exercise was very worthwhile! More than that, it was every bit as enjoyable, if pressured, as last year’s – my first A2Z Challenge.

Old friends like Frederique, Anne M Bray, Tamara, and Deborah Weber were around and new friends like Iain Kelly, Pooja Priyamvada, and Josna. I have to say that because of the aforementioned pressure from the day job, I did not read as many new blogs, or keep up with all the posts from ones I already followed, as I would like to but Hey! there is no need to limit that lovely feeling of discovering new ideas, new ways of looking at things, new friends, just to April – there is more than enough material in the A2Z Challenge from 2021 and even past years, to keep one going all year – especially since authors keep on writing new posts as well. So expect comments on a blog belonging to you sometime…

There were some friends MIA – Sharon Cathcart comes to mind but A2Z is not compulsory and many people say they have taken a break for a year and so we will hope to see them again another year…

A thought that I had when I posted a comment to the A2Z main blog, each morning (thanks for the games by the way, found time to play a few) was that many of the people who had already posted comments, were the same ones each day. Apart from this, in itself, engendering a sense of community, I imagined the dateline sweeping around the world, brushing the Indian contributors, moving on to Europe (where Frederique either gets up very early or is in an earlier time zone) before garnering the comments of the Americas later in the day. It made me wonder at what time and from where, the A2Z team posted each day?

Some thoughts on individual blogs:-

• Thanks to Anne M Bray, I had to visit the Fluevog website and now get ads for Fluevog shoes popping up lol

• Iain Kelly’s catalogue of characters and themes from his trilogy “The State” was enough to persuade me to buy the first book, which I am enjoying greatly although I then stopped reading the blog to prevent spoilers (not that he gives them) but may return to when I have finished the books…

• Jamie over on Uniquely Maladjusted but Fun was writing a Young Adult story that came to a dramatic and unexpected ending…

• Pooja Priyamvada introduced us to some wonderful words – some from languages which many of us would be unfamiliar with and she expounded their meaning beautifully in the form of a poem.

• Another internationalist is Gunilla Redelius, a Swedish jewellery maker who now lives in the Netherlands and wrote fascinatingly about Metal meets Textile  – knitting or crocheting with wire for example…

• Although my mind wasn’t so much on fabric crafts, I did manage to visit Frederique’s APPLIQUE PATCHWORK QUILTING where her breadth of ideas and depth of research were, as ever, a stimulus to get crafty when all this April madness settles down…

• Deepa Gopal at Hues n Shades gave us a painted image, a poem and a writing prompt since she was ambitiously doing Napowrimo simultaneously – with such beautiful efforts, no wonder she has won blogging awards…
• On every different tack, Eli of Just a Dad, is another writer whose eclectic posts I really enjoyed – for example –  L is for Life of Pi, largeness, and whether I like Britney Spears

• Tamara at Part-time Working Hockey Mom was the author of my favourite blog last year with her comprehensive guide to Swissair and I loved her theme this year which was the origin of words and phrases and I have to say, not so much Part Time Working Hockey Mom but Really Great Blog Writer!

• Genealogy blogs (usually too personal to one family) and travelog blogs (make you too jealous) are not normally my thing but I did enjoy Linda May Curry’s account of a year in the England 0f 2004, was a little time capsule and the perspective of an Antipodean visitor made for a novel viewpoint over at THE CURRY APPLE ORCHARD .

• Lastly but by no means least, Sarah Zama who gave us an in-depth study of The 20’s last year, gave us an equally deep account of aspects of the First World War at The Old Shelter. Not surprisingly, we learn from her reflections post that she has spent nearly a year pre-writing these posts and it shows. You might imagine that there is little that has not been said about WW1 but you would be wrong…

Finally, on the mechanics of the A2Z itself, thanks to the Team for their unstinting efforts and an idea that might simplify things next year… Could we not just have one Masterlist with ticks for the different stages Reveal, A2Z posts, Reflections and Road Trip. Maybe there is a technical reason and maybe it wouldn’t save participants from registering at each stage…