#A2ZChallenge Survivor Reflections!

I'm a survivor!

Some reflections on my month of April.

Publishing a post on every possible day during the month of April for my blogging challenge was quite an achievement, but I absolutely loved doing it.  

I kept to my theme of Roman Scotland during the Flavian Era -  i.e. during the invasions of (mainly) General Agricola. I really enjoyed finding a suitable topic to match the letter of the day and in doing the posts it's helped clarify some aspects for my current writing. Some letters were much easier than others and yet they did not necessarily turn out to be the shortest posts. 

I thoroughly enjoyed finding suitable graphics to match the topic of the post and I even made some new maps which I'll definitely use in future - here on this blog, or in my PowerPoint author presentations which I give to various sizes of local groups across Aberdeenshire, Scotland. I've also learned even more new information about the era and, for me, that's fantastic because I've still so much to learn about Roman Scotland in general, and in Flavian terms as well. 

I made a rough estimate of my word count which was a whopping 34,000 words! That's about one third of a typical novel of mine, once through its final edits. 

Do I have any regrets? Yes, I do in that my posts often took all of my spare time on a daily basis, so I didn't manage to pop into as many other blogs as I'd have liked to. I read and commented as much as I could and had the energy left for, but more blog visiting on my part would have been better. However, I loved learning lots of new things about Indian myths and legends, those were my most informative and most entertaining visits.

I had about 4200 views during April. That's a little bit more than average and.... naturally the more the merrier! 

I'm delighted that I had some visitors and love the few comments made. Since my topic is essentially quite a serious one, that's relatively formal, I'm aware that the material isn't a lighthearted coffee time read that has a huge appeal. However, I do have to be totally truthful and confess that I did the challenge mainly for myself. Any new blog visitors, and hopefully new followers are a huge bonus! Thank you very much indeed, if you were one of my new visitors!

www.123rf.com

Since this wasn't my first time doing the challenge, I'm likely to do another one, though perhaps not as soon as next year! (Unless my fiction writing is a different time period) As before it was easy to sign up and well- organised so I know roughly what to expect another time. 

I've spent these first five days of May mostly doing gardening tasks, enjoying the fresh air and some digging exercise but I must now knuckle down to my latest writing which is Book 5 of my Celtic Fervour Series. Since I managed to write 34 thousand words for my A2ZChallenge,  then I'm setting a realistic target of adding 40 thousand words to my WIP by the end of June.

I do hope the muse is in residence! 

Enjoy the next months whatever you're intending to do. 

Slainthe!