Well it’s pretty late on May 7th – reflections day and my overwhelming reflection is that I’m tired.

26 posts in 30 days is a bit of a feat (even though I did it last year), and doing that on top of my daily photo and small stone challenge (not to mention all the work related stuff) – phew. Who says I take on too much?

It all started well; I was on leave for the first week so managed to get a full week’s posts scheduled for 9am (often they posted before I was even up!). I had also pretty much noted down what I wanted to write about for each letter. Having a theme this year (of my Work In Progress) I think made things a lot easier and also gave me the motivation to keep going.
But then I went back to work – sometimes I still managed to get a little ahead and schedule for the morning but a few times the posts ended up hastily written and posted just before midnight. One embarrassing day, despite pushing back the scheduled template it posted itself empty – whoops.

The first week with my posts written I managed to do my commenting duties commenting on 5+ blogs a day but this slipped too (sorry). I read some excellent blogs and most of us seemed to reciprocate and visit back. A few I returned to for repeat visits and I’ve ‘followed’ through Blogger/Wordpress/Twitter many to return to when my energy returns. I did give up on commenting on some (I hate captcha – can’t read it) and although I’m following some on Blogger I don’t have a Blogger blog and consequentially I don’t really see them. The WordPress bloggers fared better mainly because I can get an e-mail of their blog post (which I do see).

I definitely seemed to gain a few followers – thanks guys – hope you are happy with slightly less posting now and I also feel like I engaged more with the people who were already following me (whether it was via the blog, twitter or facebook).

I’d like to give a shout out to a couple of my real life besties who were also taking part – Stacey and Jay  (I always read their posts) and Catherine for commenting (although she wasn’t taking part this year wrote a fantastic A to Z of crafting last year).  Also I’d like to thank Emma Maree  for commenting on lots of my posts – she’s a lovely fellow writer I ‘met’ on Nicola Morgan’s blog just before the challenge started.

My funniest moment was meeting fellow AtoZer J.C.Martin – for some reason we both seemed to think that each other was in America even though we both live in the South of England. Her A to Z of Crime Fiction will be a useful reference source for my WIP (so thanks).

There was a plethora of subjects to enjoy – lots on Writing, Travel, Life in general, films, books, Buffy, Death. Something to suit everyone really. I’m not going to list all of the blogs I enjoyed but if you decide to check out any of my posts please do visit those who left me comments – they were all fantastic. You can also find the full list of participants here and those of us reflecting are linking up here. A big shout out to the organisers too – thanks for an exhilarating April.

Finally, I did learn more about my WIP – I have received some really useful feedback and it generally just got me thinking again. Now I just need to get some energy back and start writing it again. I’ll think about whether I’m going to take part in the challenge again next year though if I can get ahead in March I probably will.