...A Little Help From Our Friends: Helpful Bloggers to the Rescue

          As I have been teasing all week, today I have a special announcement.  And I guess it would be of little surprise to anyone that this announcement has something to do with the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge.  If this is your guess, then you are correct.

          The Blogging from A to Z April Challenge is climbing toward 300 participants with a probability that we may go over this amount before the arrival of the start date.  Last year I was nearly overwhelmed by the almost 100 bloggers who participated in A to Z.  I knew that this year would be even bigger since we had a much earlier start to get the word out to the blogging community.

            Fortunately, popular bloggers Alex J Cavanaugh, Jennifer Daiker, and Talli Roland came to my rescue to make the Challenge easier to administer and be a greater success.  However we came to the conclusion that even we might not be able to satisfactorily pull this off to a point that would make the Challenge as great as it could be.  For this reason we are expanding the A to Z Team.

Here are the four added members of the A to Z Team:

Jeffrey Beesler from World of the Scribe....

Candace Ganger from The Misadventures in Candyland

Karen Jones Gowen from Coming Down the Mountain: From Reclusive Writer to Published Author....

Stephen Tremp from Breakthrough Blogs..

           Some of you may already be familiar with all or some of these bloggers.  I'll let you visit each of their blogs so you can say hello and get to know them better.  They each have their own unique strengths and talents which should help make the challenge more fun and more rewarding for all of us. 

           In the weeks to come, we will be offering our special Challenge posts to make your April a more successful race to the finish line.  Be sure to watch the posts of the A to Z Team as we present tips from our experiences in blogging, writing, and life in general.  It won't always be A to Z of course, but we hope the special posts we give you will be something you will find useful and enjoyable. 

          The A to Z Team will be here to answer your questions as best we can and provide support to your blogging efforts.  Let us know if you feel like you need some attention or any suggestions.  Don't forget though, we are also participating in the Challenge and even with the added members our capabilities are limited.  That's why there is one more team member who is the most important one of all.

           Who is that most important team member?   It's YOU!  Without the participation, interaction, and mutual support that only each one of you can give to the Challenge community as a whole, this run through the alphabet is going to be less than the best we can make it.  We're counting on you--every one of you--to see us to the end of April with a grand sense of accomplishment.

            I'll have more to say about all of this in the next few weeks.  I'm sure that our A to Z Team members will likewise have their own words of encouragement.  We're all friends here and never underestimate the power of friends.  We can do this challenge together--so let's do it! 

            There is one more request.  Over the next few days if there are any other bloggers that you think would benefit from this Challenge or who are still on the fence trying to decide if they should do it, please try to get them to sign up this weekend.  We can make it to our goal of 300 by Monday if we try.  Please do what you can.

            Now enough from me.  Head on over to the above links and visit the blogs of our A to Z Team members, say hello, and if you're not following them yet, do so now.  And don't forget to continue going through the Linky list and visit, comment, and follow.  In other words:  network, network, network. April will be here soon. 



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A Very Special and Exciting Announcement!

            Are you ready for the Blogging From A to Z April Challenge?

            I know that some of you are ready because you've told me.   Others of you may be thinking about it and I'm hoping that today's post will get you to thinking a bit harder about it.   And then some of you may be thinking, "What's a Blogging From A to Z Challenge anyway?"

             This challenge started last year to celebrate my reaching the 200 follower mark.  I had no idea that it would take off as well as it did in the short lead time I had in 2010.  Nearly 100 bloggers participated last year with many more keeping up with the progress.  In the end most of the participants were very satisfied with having been a part of the challenge.

How does the Challenge work?

             The premise of the Blogging From A to Z April Challenge is to post something on your blog every day in April except for Sundays.  In doing this you will have 26 blog posts--one for each letter of the alphabet.   Each day you will theme your post according to a letter of the alphabet.

              You will only be limited by your own imagination in this challenge.  There is an unlimited universe of possibilities.  You can post essays, short pieces of fiction, poetry, recipes, travel sketches, or anything else you would like to write about.  You don't have to be a writer to do this.  You can post photos, including samples of your own art or craftwork.    Everyone who blogs can post from A to Z.

How can this Challenge help you?

             Ask someone who did it last year.   I invite any of you who Blogged From A to Z in April 2010 to leave a comment below telling how the challenge helped you as a blogger and otherwise.   Some of the benefits that I have seen mentioned and personally experienced were improvement as a blogger and a writer, greater self-discipline,  finding new blog friends, and increasing followers to each of our own blogs.  

             This year the Challenge is being announced two months ahead of time which gives everyone plenty of time to prepare.   Taking this in into consideration I anticipate having at least 300 bloggers joining in with us and I hope you are one of them.  


And here's the best news of all!

            Last year was nearly overwhelming for me to administrate the ongoing challenge by myself.  There is no way I can expand this Challenge to 300 or more participants and expect to do it alone.  That is why I've joined up with three of the most successful bloggers and blog event organizers that I know. 
            Just in case you don't know these great bloggers and writers, let me introduce them to you:

Star blogger Alex J. Cavanaugh, author of the popular science fiction novel CassaStar.  We met in last year's A to Z and he'll swear by the Challenge.  He's already organized events such as the Movie Dirty Dozen, The Top Ten TV Shows Blogfest, and the current Top Ten Music Countdown-- each one of these an unqualified success.    Alex is determined to see A to Z go to 500 participants and with him on board I think we can do it. 

Power-blogger  Jen Daiker from Unedited  jumped right into blogging last April by joining up in the A to Z Challenge.   In her short span of blogging she has amazingly passed the 1000 follower mark--I still am flabbergasted by that feat.  Blog events she has hosted or co-hosted are the Guess That Character Fest, The Great Blogging Experiment (with Alex Cavanaugh and Elana Johnson), and The Be Jolly By Golly Blogfest.   If only all 1059 of her followers blogged from A to Z with us!

Talli Roland from her self-named blog and the author of The Hating Game , her recent novel which is still doing hot business.  When Talli did her Web Splash to coincide with the release of The Hating Game, there were hundreds of fans who helped kick off the campaign with their own blogs.   She'll be in charge of our international affairs since she currently lives in London, England.   And Jen is already building her army of followers while Alex is taking control of CassaStar and the universe--it's a busy crew here.

           And if you're a regular reader of my blog then you probably know something about me, Arlee Bird--there's plenty written about me in my blog pages.    I encourage you to click on the above links to three blogs and give your greeting and, if not one already, become a follower of each of their blogs.

          Whenever you are ready to join up with us, sign up on the Linky list or if you're not sure how to do that let one of us know and we'll  add your blog to our list.  

          
Linky list is no longer accessible on this page.



          Below is a badge you can add to your blog to help advertise to your readers. If you give us a plug on your own blogs now and then we wouldn't mind that either.  This lovely badge was created by Jennifer Daiker.

          Now let's hear about your A to Z experiences, opinions, or questions.    Help us make this a big success and you become a better blogger.

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Tossing It Out Tuesday: Work Clutter Chaos

         What keeps you from working more effectively?  Perhaps it's time to toss out some of the stuff and the time wasters that keep you from getting your work done on time.  The suggestions I'm going to make will be applicable to writing and blogging, but they would be just as applicable on the job or at home.  And since I sometimes feel like the King of Clutter, the Dean of Disorder, the Maestro of Messiness, and the Sultan of Workstation Salmagundi I am talking to myself as much as anyone else.  Today I'm back to my E-mail box.

                            E-Stuff

          In a previous post I discussed the problem of accumulated e-mail.  Last month I went from a high email count of 1825 new emails to a low of 12 new emails.  This was achieved through deletions and dispersal into files.  I have been faithfully keeping this system while deleting and consolidating files as I have time.  However, an old problem has resurfaced to throw a monkey wrench in the workings of the e-mail box. So here I am back over the 200 new email mark.

        Now it's time to raise the old Shakespearian question first raised by Hamlet. "To Blogfest or not to Blogfest?"  Just in time for this long weekend two blog events converged to bring about the perfect email storm.  First there was KarenG's BBQ:  a lot of you got suckered into this one and most of you probably added a lot more than the 20 new followers that I added.  Sorry I couldn't resist joining in and I found several cool new blogs and several bloggers found Tossing It Out.

       Then on top of that, there was the Trifecta staged by Alex J. Cavanaugh, Elana Johnson, and Jennifer Daiker which coincided with my related blog post of yesterday which meant more comments on my site and more blogs for me to investigate.  As a consequence of all this I was inundated with hundreds--maybe thousands--of emails that I could barely screen and delete fast enough over the course of this extended weekend.   Is it madness?  Or is it just part of the blog growing and maintenance that all of us were talking about and striving for.  Yes to all of the above.

        At some point the Blog events have to be curtailed or tossed out.  This said after having signed up for Alex's   Top Ten TV Show Blogfest.  Just one more!  I swear it can become an addiction, but its a quick fix for getting more followers.  In the future I may have to just close my eyes to all the blog fun and focus on doing what I need to do to control all of the E-stuff like festing, visiting, and trying to find new blogs.  Perhaps lie fallow for a while and see how that works.

         Did you participate in any of the above events this past weekend?  How many followers did you add?  Does being a part of a blog event play havoc with your time?   What are your favorite blog events that you like to join in on?

          If you missed any of the above events and would like to try to gain some followers, check out the above links and check out the comment sections of each blog.