April A to Z 2015, Mateys!

I know April A to Z is a ways off yet, but I am thinking about it already . . .

 

. . . I don’t want a Team and don’t want to be a Minion, but wouldn’t mind having a crew . . .

 

. . . a KREWE would be even better! Click “Continue Reading” for info.

MORE

This is a memo. I’ll tell you what I am doing on my own and what I’m willing to do with help. Then I’ll plan my spring blogging based on the response I receive over the next couple of weeks.

I’ve added a page category here called “Planning.” At the moment, it only has an April A to Z page, but once I start planning Feminist Fridays for 2015, I’ll have one for that, too. This is my A to Z plan. Registration will open in early 2015. The date hasn’t been announced, but we need to look for it and be ready to register the minute it opens.

1. All posts for this blog will be written in advance by me and I may schedule my April posts from this blog on Sydney time rather than with New York/London time. I already have my topics.

2. I’m not building a page this year, but I will to add a blurb at the bottom of every post here that says “Friends participating in A to Z:” with some links. That’s one of the things the planning page is for. To give you a way to let me know you’re doing A to Z the minute you make up your mind to join the challenge. There’s more info on that page for friends and for anyone else who’s interested. The rest of this is mostly for collaborators and Sourcerer contributors.

3. I will register my blogs the moment registration opens to get good list placement. I will use the social media to talk often about A to Z from the moment the announcement goes out until it’s done. I will hold my topic reveals until reveal day.

4. Sourcerer will participate if we can do it without disturbing our content themes there. I’d like to make the decision about this in the next month. Here’s my suggested plan.

Sourcerer can do a non-themed challenge. We’ll assign an unofficial theme to a couple of days so everyone who’s contributing can write about the stuff they normally write about. No one except me has to come up with more than one post per week. The rest can just be pop culture-type posts. We’ll go heavy on comics and TV with a little music, film, and social media thrown in. Here’s a breakdown of the month.

• Monday – Freestyle (E, K, Q, W)
• Tuesday – Books, and I’m putting them here as a way of saying thanks to The Broke and The Bookish. A to Z doesn’t lend itself well to Top Ten Tuesdays, but that doesn’t mean we can’t include a blurb at the end of the Tuesday posts and thank them for their awesome meme. (F, L, R, X)
• Wednesday – Comics (A, G, M, S, Y)
• Thursday – Freestyle. (B, H, N, T, Z)
• Friday – Freestyle (C, I, O, U)
• Saturday – Freestyle (D, J, P, V).

This is the only way Sourcerer participates. If we can’t get this together, we have to keep it business as usual over there and fill in with A to Z roundups on the days when we don’t have good posts. It’s smart to think about things we’ve written and popular posts so that we can work links to our best stuff into the A to Z posts. “Batman,” “Marvel,”  “Doctor Who,” “Penny Dreadful,” “Twitter,” “Zombie,” “WordPress,” “Lord of the Rings,” and “Leonard Cohen” are no-brainers, for example. Brainstorming the topics will be easy. I just came up with a third of our potential topics in two minutes.

5. This one part is tentative and may not happen, but if I can swing it, I will go through my photo archives and pull out the 30 best images to use as wordless photo features for Sourcerer. These won’t be official A to Z posts, but I’ll title them alphabetically. A to Z posts will run in the mid-AM, photo features will run in the late PM. That’s two posts per day for the entire run. And who knows what The Monster will come up with? 😀

If we can get everything done in advance, I should have the time to visit five pages with my personal account and five with Sourcerer’s every day, tweet a big bunch of A to Z links while I am commenting, and build some Pinterest boards as I go.

This year I went in unprepared and A to Z almost did me in. I was well into the challenge before I realized how many bloggers I know were doing it. That’s not happening to me next year. The only questions are whether or not Sourcerer is in, and how many of my friends who are doing A to Z would like to let me know in advance.

Images: A to Z Survivor badge by Jeremy of Being Retro. Emanuel Wynne flag via openclipart.org, public domain image. Krewe of the Rolling Elvi photo via Part Time Monster and used with permission.