Sunday, May 6, 2012

April A to Z reflections post


Before I start, one of my interviewees, Shane Garvey has become interviewer in his new blog, Meet the Gamers .  At the moment he has one interview, but there are going to be many more, so keep your eyes peeled.  Also check out my review of Avenger! on my other blog - Lone Tiger Gamebook Reviews.

God, am I glad that I did this year's April A to Z.  I would like to thank all of the people who were gracious enough to take the time to answer my interview questions for without you, the challenge could not have been so amazing.  I would also like to thank everone who took the time to read the interviews and leave comments and I apologise for not having the time to comment wither on this blog or on other blogs as much as I would have liked.

I will follow Zhu's suggestion and put all of the interviews into an index on a page so that they can be read for many years to come.

The good


The best thing about the April A to Z was that several gamebook greats took the time to answer my questions. I am eternally grateful to all of you for doing so for between you, you have created an unrivalled collection of gamebook lore for all to read.  I hope this collection will introduce gamebooks to a wider audience and also introduce gamebook lovers to each other, inspire people to read and write gamebooks and inform other gamebook writers about how to create better gamebooks.  I also hope that the interviewees have received more traffic and publicity thanks to their April A to Z interview.  They spent some of their valuable time answering my questions for free, so I hope they get more publicity out of it.

Speaking of publicity, I certainly got some.  This April, I had over 11000 page views, over double my latest record.  I also picked up 17 extra followers and found some great blogs to read.  Have a look at my blog list to see who I follow.

I would like to thank the April A to Z staff and encourage anyone who wants to share their great blog and discover many other great blogs to do it next year.


The bad


I did not have enough time to comment as much as I would have liked :(.  April A to Z is not just about creating 26 blog posts. It's also about having your own great conversation with all of the other bloggers out there.  I will bear this in mind in the future.


The interesting


All of my posts got lots of views, but my humour and gamebooks article actually got the third highest view count that month.  Strange.


The future


Back in January, I said that I would be limiting my posts because of other commitments.  I'm terrible at keeping new year's resolutions but now I must say that I really will be cutting down on the number and length of my posts because I really have other commitments to attend to and I'm not just talking about gamebook commitments either.  I will clarify this in a month or two.

I don't think that this is necessarily a bad thing.  Long blog posts do not necessarily make for good reading.  I have seen many a short blog post generate tons of discussion - in writing about something at length, I may be taking away the opportunity for other people to add their two cents and I want that to happen more - I want more people to get involved in gamebooks.  My aims are to tap into what people feel is important in gamebooks and aim for brevity and pithiness in my writing - something I need to work on.

I'm not going away - there is lots more great stuff and it will be regular.  I just have other stuff to do now.  This is another reason why I am so happy that this mammoth A to Z went well.  I can look back on it and reflect on what I achieved.

Many thanks, all of you and happy gamebooking!

9 comments:

  1. Congratulations on such a successful April! Tremendous effort with exceptional results!

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    1. Many thanks JF and many thanks for being part of it. It couldn't have happened without you!

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  2. Glad you really enjoyed the Challenge! This was my third year and it gets better every time.

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  3. I'm glad it went so well for you. I certainly enjoyed reading all of the posts. They will be missed!

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  4. Well done for such a prolific blogging effort - I read every post and enjoyed them all :)

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  5. Glad you had a good experience. I am just now finding your blog, but I will be taking a look around. Just wanted to say hello and nice to meet you :)

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  6. Thanks for the positive review. I'm glad it was worthwhile and productive for you. Keep spreading the A to Z glow.


    Lee
    A Faraway View
    An A to Z Co-host blog

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  7. I didn't visit all blogs during the challenge but I'm visiting every single one with a reflection post. They're the winners! Congratulations on finishing the challenge, hopefully we will do it again next April!

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  8. It was a great series, Stuart, and I enjoyed knowing there would be at least one interesting new post every morning - sometimes more than one!

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