It has now been a full week since I completed the A – Z Blogging Challenge for this April. Being relatively new to blogging it was the first time I have taken part and I thoroughly enjoyed it! I set myself the task of writing a posting a short story for each day, with the word count set between 500 and 100 words. To make it even more fun, I wanted to include some of my new friends on the blogosphere and beyond and so I invited anyone who reads my blog or follows me on social media to suggest a prompt word for the letters I would be using. This turned out to be a great success as many lovely people chipped in and helped me out!

I stumbled a bit during the last few days, but I managed to pull it all together and complete my final three stories on the last day of April. It was quite demanding having to write even a very short story every day around my full-time job, but it was eye-opening as well. It showed me that if I have a set goal and I put pen to paper every day then I can achieve a lot in a short space of time. Although the stories were mainly thought of on my bus journey into work, preliminary notes scribbled on my lunch break and then written out in full once I’d finished work, I still managed to produce a variety of tales which my readers found engaging and interesting. I tried to avoid the more obvious connotations of each word and strove to come up with something which would surprise my readers. I ended up writing fictional pieces about a lonely dog, a calculating murderer, a perverted stone imp, a Dickensian double-act, a swarm of militant wasps and an invigorating love-affair, just to mention a few.  It’s given me a whole new confidence in my writing ability and my time management. I plan to print out these stories soon, so that I will have physical proof of the roughly 23,400 words I wrote in just one month…if that won’t drive me forwards with my writing, then I don’t know what else will!

If you’d like to revisit some of my stories, here are the links to the blogs and also links to the amazing people who helped me out.

A – ABANDONED (Niki’s Simple Life)
B – BOMBASTIC -(Kate McClelland)
C – CONCUBINE (Kate McClelland)
D – DRAGOON (Kate)
E – EFFERVESCENT (Kate)
F – FRAGILE (Kate)
G – GARGOYLE (Kate)
H – HESSIAN (Kate)
I – INKLING (Kate)
J- JACKASS (Kate)
K – KARMA (My partner in crime, Samwise)
L – LEGERDEMAIN (Sakina Hussain)
M – MALEVOLENT (Esther Newton)
N – NORTH (Sakina)
O – OVERCOMPENSATE (Sakina)
P – POLYGAMY (My younger brother and great sport, Ben Kenobi)
Q – QUISLING (Geoff Le Pard, the man who inspired this Challenge)
R – RANCID (My dear old Mum-well, not THAT old, obviously!)
S – SAUSAGES (My work colleague, Sarah)
T – TORRID (Mum)
U – UNREAL (Geoff)
V – VACUOUS (Esther)
W – WASTED (My work colleague, Jamie)
X – XENOPHOBIA – (Viki Allerston)
Y – YURT (Viki)
Z – ZANY (Viki)

Thank you to every single one of you who read my stories and gave me feedback. You’re all brilliant, wonderful people! Alas, I have been a blogger far too short a time to post among such excellent and admirable hobbits!

 

How did your own A – Z Challenges go? Let me know in the comment section!