Awards

Here's some awards and stuff:

From everyone's favorite world traveler and poetry wiz, Yvonne Lewis, of Welcome to My World of Poetry comes this Stylish Blogger Award.    Thank you, Yvonne.  You are one of my sweetest and most consistent commenters.


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       This award is from Jeffrey Beesler at World of the Scribe, who had some wise words of advice in the same post that delivered this award to me.   I also want to thank Jeffrey for the fantastic job he has been doing with the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge.  You have made a lot of us smile.
 
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The Words Crafter at Rainy Day Wanderer gave my this Through The Keyhole Award for making a correct guess on a blogfest.   I had missed this one.  She passed to me on December 17th.  Talk about getting behind.

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From Elizabeth Mueller at her Author Blog comes still another Stylish Blogger Award.

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        My good blog buddy and fellow host of the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge Alex J. Cavanaugh very kindly passed this Friends for the Journey award my way.  The award is the creation of
Michelle Gregory at Beautiful Chaos in honor of those who have helped on the blogging journey.


The Rules for Passing It On:

1. Pass it on to 7 other bloggers and tell how they've encouraged you.


2. Please let your recipients know that it started at Beautiful Chaos.


3. Leave a comment on this post when you've posted on your blog.

        My distribution of this award is based on those who gave me comments early in my blogging career. They let me know that somebody out there was reading what I had to say.  Without those early comments I might have gotten frustrated and hung it all up.  There are several who don't have blogs so I will limit the award to those who do have blogs in case they might wish to display it on their site.

Patricia Stoltey was among my earliest commenters who inspired me to keep the posts coming.

Stephen T. McCarthy is the guy who got me started blogging and encouraged me and inspired me from the beginning.   I usually don't particularly like it when people have more than one blog, but Stephen does and I can forgive that since his have good content and good writing.  You can visit him at the blog he'd like you to read, Stuffs, or at the blog he really wants you to read, Ferret-Faced Facist Friends.   He doesn't accept these awards but I still like to give him some well-deserved recognition now and then.

Ada Zdanowicz doesn't have a blog, but she and her sister Emilee were among my earliest commenters and followers.   You can visit her at her website CollagePodge.  I think she'll at least put up the award on her site.and maybe she'll even eventually start a blog.

Judy at Sixty Is Just the Beginning frequently encouraged me with her comments at the start of my blog days.

Diana at Rotten With Images didn't have a blog when she left her comments on some of my early posts, but partly through my encouragement she now has one.  She still doesn't post very often, but perhaps with some more encouragement from other bloggers she might post more in the future.   Hope you'll at least stop by her blog to say hello.

Tom at Ocean's Six Group Blog had left comments and provided support in other ways.  He has a very helpful blog about real estate.  If you are buying, selling, or just keeping up with what's happening in the housing market, you  might enjoy checking out his informative blog.

Gregg at Gospel Driven Disciples has continually offered support, encouragement, and enlightenment to me.

Stephen Tremp was an early follower and consistently leaves me comments to make my efforts feel worthwhile.  You can find Stephen at Breakthrough Blogs.

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             My thanks to the above bloggers for these thoughtful awards.   It's possible that I have missed other awards and if that's the case I will put them in a future post.   Now I hope you'll pay a visit to the above links and give them a nice hello.


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Atlas Blogged

                                                 

        When I started reading it, I had not realized it would be so long.  The narrative started well enough and had me interested to see what was coming next.  Then the author took a detour.  In befuddlement I plodded on.

          Did this author have any sense of an inner editor?  There was this and then there was that.   And then there was this that had no relation to that.  On and on it went with no clear point in sight.  By this time I had already invested so much time in reading that I was determined to finish. 

             Finally, after what seemed like hours, I reached the end.  What was that all about anyway?   I could only sigh deeply and shake my head in frustrated disappointment.  That had to have been the longest blog post I've ever read in my life.  And for today it would be the only blog post that I would be reading.

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            I've been guilty of this, I know.  In April many of us will be trying to read more posts than usual and leave a comment on each of them.  Those long rambling posts will become a liability.  Readers may decide to just skip the long ones in favor of several more manageable posts.

            Here are a few things you might want to consider in April and perhaps always:

             1)   If your post covers a lot of different topics, then maybe it would be better to turn it into several different posts.

             2)   If your topic covers many different points, then maybe you should turn it into a series extended over several days.

              3)  If you really have that much to say, then maybe you should write a book.

          These are just some thoughts that I decided to toss out to you.  What do you think?


                                                                                              (302 words)


Coming Saturday:  Awards post.
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Thank you bloggers!

A Logical Decision:

           Starting next week I am going to change my posting days to a more logical schedule.   I will be keeping Monday as it is.   My Tuesday will be moving to Wednesday and my Thursday will now be on Friday.  Does that make sense?  In other words I will continue posting three days per week on the same topics I post on now.   See the schedule tab above if you want to know what those topics are.  And be aware that I often don't necessarily stick to those topics anyway.  In any case I believe this is a more logical approach since each post will have an extra day to be commented on and I probably don't have to say much more than that.

A Lot of Help From Our Friends:

          With April rapidly approaching the A to Z roster is heading toward 400 sign ups.  The 500 goal aimed for by Stephen and Alex (as well as the rest of us) seems to be a real possibility.   I want to thank the A to Z Team for the great efforts so far and again encourage all of you to go to their blogs (they are listed at the top of my blog page) and follow them if you are not doing so already and be sure to watch their blogs in the coming weeks for some of the special features they will be offering about the Challenge.

           Tomorrow (Wednesday March 2nd) Alex J Cavanaugh will be trying to drive home a point that some may have heard before but it bears repeating.  This will be an important post so I hope you will check it out.   My other co-hosts will also be having posts coming up though I don't have the scheduled dates at the present time so just be watching.

           As I've said before, our biggest help comes from all of you readers.  I have been impressed in how so many of you have been spreading the word to your blog friends and hope you will continue to do so to help us reach the amazing 500 mark.    Today I want to recognize some more of the bloggers that I have found with badges in their sidebars and special posts promoting the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge.

           
Badge in Sidebar and other special mentions:

Karen Walker  at Following the Whispers is one that I had missed earlier.

Kari Marie at Writing By Heart is helping out.

Walk 2 Write in Florida has joined us in the Challenge and announced it by adding the badge their sidebar.

Pamela Jo at There's Just Life gives the Challenge a boost as well.

Heather at The Waiting Is the Hardest Part displays the badge and mentioned the Challenge in her Valentine's Day post.

Jen at Widdershins and Skeleton Keys mentioned the Challenge and added the badge to her sidebar.

Sheila from Sheila Scribbles has joined up and added the badge but don't tell her husband (her words not mine).

A to Z also received a mention in a blog post from Steven Chapman (writer) .

The Challenge badge can be found on the Blue, Purple, and Scarlett blog.

J.D. Brown has also dived into the April alphabet soup bowl and plastered the badge on her sidebar.

K.C. Woolf at The Woman Condition gave A to Z a mention in a post.

I also noticed the badge at the Box o' Whine site with a rather different sort of message about the Challenge.  Her blog is available for comments after a rough start last year when her comments were disabled for some odd reason which she could only attribute to a template change.  Now the site looks nice and leaving comments is easy.

Returning from last year, Laura from Wavy Lines has put up the badge.

Newish blogger Li now has the badge in the sidebar of her Flash Fiction blog.

Nutschell The Writing Nut is another blogger who has added the badge to her site.

Petra at Penned Pebbles  has added the badge.


Special Posts:

Sue Roebuck from Lauracea gave A to Z a special nod.

Susan Gourley/Kelley at Susan Says had a nice offering on February 15th and she's correct in calling A to Z "Blogging Fun" because it is.

Scarlett at  Blue, Purple, and Scarlett had some interesting thoughts about A to Z.

AnnMaree (Emu) from Emu's Creations found out about the Challenge from Scarlett.

Mock at Stay on Target featured the badge with a link.

Thanks also to Tim at The Other Side for talking about the Challenge.

Bev at My Reader's Block had a special post about A to Z.

Holly from It's All a Matter of Perspective had me scratching my head until I realized she had signed up for the Challenge.

Ella from Ella's Edge gave us another nice mention--she's one of our top promoters of the blog event.

Thank you Blair at Yellow Matter Custard for your post.

Sue at I Refuse to Go Quietly! made some noise about the Challenge.

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            As always I would ask that you try to stop by each of these sites and follow, get to know them, and let them know that you appreciate the support they are giving.   Now's the time to start making your blog friendships as you prepare for April.   And I'd say the above bloggers are some friends you might like to have along your side in the future.

           And speaking of having blog friends to support you:


A Bit O' Promotion for an Upcoming Author:

"JM Tohline's 'The Great Lenore' is available for pre-order today! - http://bit.ly/bDvYFw .     This is the message that JM asked anyone who would to post on their sites today.  You know I'm always happy to help promote fellow writers.  If you would like more information about J.M. Tohline visit his site.

This is the message from Paul Joseph a friend of J.M. Tohline   You may want to visit Paul's site to find out how you can win a copy of The Great Lenore.

            We'll leave it at that for today--I'd say that's a lot of information.   If you have posted something about the A to Z Challenge or posted the badge and I have not yet mentioned you, please let me know.  I'm trying to get around to as many blogs as I can, but it can be easy to miss some of these.   Also if you are interested in doing a guest post about the challenge please let me know.  We'd love to hear some testimonials about how last year's challenge helped you or how you plan to use it to your benefit this year.
And if there are any special topics you'd still like to hear covered or questions that you would like answered please leave a comment below.

           Now let me get back to preparing a few more of my April posts.   I'm getting a head start.  How about you?




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