Weekend Coffee Share: Blogging A to Z Edition

If we were having coffee, I would tell you I’ve decided not to do the Blogging A to Z April Challenge here at the the personal blog. Sourcerer is still in for 100% sure. We‘ll have a theme reveal there soon, and I’m pulling out all the stops for A to Z on the wider social media. Just not doing it here. I’ll remove the badge from the sidebar and ask that Just Gene’O be removed from the list later this weekend.

Getty stock image.

I’d tell you that despite the fact I have a theme and topics for an awesome Tolkien-themed challenge, this is the smart thing to do because I have so much going on. Given the number of guest blogging commitments I have and the amount of time it’s already taking me to keep the blogs going, I don’t think it’s a good idea to try and write 26 posts to run here in April. Among other reasons, that would give me 26 threads to answer in addition to Sourcerer’s A to Z threads.

Blogging A to Z here while Sourcerer is also doing it would be a magnificent blogging feat, and I have no doubt I could do it. But I’ve worked extremely hard to push my blogging schedule far enough into the future and make enough friends to have Sourcerer publishing every day without ever waking up in the morning and needing to write a post for that day. This is why Diana and I blogged at such a frantic pace last year — to make enough friends and generate large enough archives to be able to publish every day without needing to write a blog post every day.

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The bottom line is that if I were going to do A to Z here, the posts should already be written, but several things came up in January and February that I just had to prioritize, and they did not get written. This isn’t an everyday blog, and every like and comment I leave on WordPress points people to Sourcerer. That’s the blog that’s going to benefit from my A to Z visits. So I may very well write and load 26 posts in the next three weeks — I’m capable of doing that. But they will not be A to Z posts to run at this blog.

I’d tell you, too, that I won’t be around much on the linkups nor on Twitter this weekend. I’ve got the spring run of Tolkien drafted. I have to load the last two posts at Part Time Monster and do the finishing work on those. Then I have to track down links and do the final edit on a guest post I’m doing for a friend to run at the end of this month so I can send that one off. (Done)

Once that’s done, I have this list to work through. It seems like a lot, and it is, but keep in mind I can produce four to six posts in a day if I stay off Facebook and Twitter and just work, and I routinely finish and schedule a week’s worth of blogging in about two-and-a-half hours on Sunday evenings. It will not all get done this weekend, but most of it will.

1. Finish the A to Z theme reveal for Sourcerer, which is drafted and just needs links and art.
2. Load and finish two emailed drafts for Sourcerer to finish out our Wednesdays for this month.
3. Crop and load photo features for Sourcerer for the next two weeks.
4. Write the Feminist Friday wrap-up post to run here next Friday (this week’s STEM discussion at Drifting Through has been good, and that thread may in fact still be active).
5. Write four A to Z posts for Sourcerer (I have the letters C, E, L, and T. If you are familiar with my blogging, you can probably guess what at least three of those are going to be about 😉 )
6. Write two A to Z posts for Part Time Monster that Diana and I brainstormed this week.
7. Load the rough drafts of three guest posts for Comparative Geeks to run post-April just to get them in the queue so I can finish them later. (Done).
   

   arrrr, mateys!

Quite the list, eh? Once it’s done, though, I’ll be free to write at a leisurely pace for May and spend ALL the social media time in April finding readers for Sourcerer contributors and making friends by visiting from the A to Z list.

I’ll use the day and tomorrow morning to get as far ahead on it as I can, then tweet for @1000Speak for an hour or two tomorrow afternoon. Basically, I’m volunteering them a couple of hours on Twitter on Sundays when I can manage it, and other bloggers are keeping the account active during the rest of the week.

Then I’d ask you how your weekend’s looking.

— Edited at 6:30 my time on Saturday, March 14, to tick off the Tolkien and the guest post items as (Done). I’ll use different colors to tick the rest off so I can analyze the workflow later. This is not bad, considering I also gave my family 5 hours today, answered a few comments, made a new friend, spent some time in private collaboration chats, and retweeted from the phone a bit when I was not able to be at the computer. #AmWorking, always.