The End of the A to Z Challenge, links and reflections.

The A to Z April Challenge is done for 2013 and I survived: yay! For those who didn't get to do it this year, it's a lot of fun and there is some really helpful advice to get you going. Well worth participating.

This is my reflections post and I thought I'd put up my table of posts for easy access before I get on to my thoughts.

April A to Z Challenge Posts
Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
	01 A Android	02 B Bard	03 C Cakes	04 D Death	05 E Effect	06 F Favourite
	Me talking about my favourite fictional androids.	I wax lyrical about Shakespeare.	Links and info about some of my fav cake recipes.	Weird and wonderful murder mystery deaths.	A discussion of special effects.	A few of my favourite things.
07 /	08 G Giggle	09 H Harry Potter	10 I Imagination	11 J James McAvoy	12 K Krypton	13 L Love
	Some things that amuse me.	My love of Harry Potter.	One of a writer's most important tools.	About one of my fav actors.	Superman, his home and his weakness.	A great and tricky gift.
14 /	15 M Marvel	16 N Natasha	17 O Otherworldly	18 P Publishing	19 Q Q	20 R Romance
	Why I love the Marvel universe.	A post about me :).	A short fiction inspired by the word.	The ups and downs of publishing.	James Bond's Q	Romance is a wonderful thing.
21 /	22 S Sex	23 T Tom Hiddleston	24 U Unicorn	25 V Vampire	26 W Werewolf	27 X Xenomorph
	A discussion of sex in fiction.	Another of my fav actors.	A mythical creature for which I have a soft spot.	A short vampire inspired story.	About my fav fictional werewolves.	Who doesn't love an Alien?
28 /	29 Y Yellow	30 Z Zeus
	Simply about the colour yellow.	A short humorous story about gods.

Reflections

I have enjoyed this challenge a great deal and have seen some wonderful blogs and met some wonderful people, however, there were definitely not as many comments forthcoming as I had hoped. I saw the number of visits spike, but very few people left comments, so I had to come to the conclusion, either I writer terrible blog posts or many people don't comment.

I turned of word verification so there were no obstacles, but I'm wondering whether having anonymous comments turned off due to spam, stopped some people bothering.

I still have a lot of blogs to visit, so I hope to still make some new friends. What I did was make an excel spreadsheet of blogs I have visited and then mark if I commented (which I tried to do every time, but there were some blogs I just didn't get, sorry) and if they commented back so I can keep track of people who are into interaction :).

All the advice on the run up to the start of the challenge was incredibly useful, especially the whole, write as many of your blog posts in advance as you can. This was by far and away the best nugget of wisdom ever. I had over half of mine written by the beginning of April and that meant so much less stress so I could concentrate on other projects as well.

One of the things that amazed me was how some people could get so much information into so few words. There were some short blog posts I visited that were simply brilliant (there were others where I thought someone couldn't really be bothered, but let's not dwell on those ;)). Some posts had no more than a few lines, but the pearls of wisdom or nuggets of information were so interesting that the post was practically perfect.

Then there were other longer posts that were simply a joy to read.

The way people had themes was also most enjoyable - so many interesting things to learn.

One thing I would say to those leaving comments, adding a link to your blog at the bottom of your comment is extremely helpful. There were a couple of times I had great trouble finding blogs to take a look at and return comments to. There was a wonderful post about it on the A to Z site, after which I started to add a link to my comments because it makes life so much easier :).

Thank you to the organisers, thank you the ambassadors, thank you to bloggers and commenters; it has been a wonderful April.