{"id":158,"date":"2012-03-23T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-23T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/booksyalove.com\/?p=158"},"modified":"2012-03-23T14:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-03-23T14:00:00","slug":"ready-set-blog-reflective-blog-challenges-ahead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/?p=158","title":{"rendered":"Ready, set, blog! (reflective) – blog challenges ahead"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/div>\n

Did you ever get a “little set in your ways”?
Is it time to push your writing muscles a bit?
A blog challenge may be just what you need!<\/p>\n

With over 150 book recommendations, BooksYALove heads into its 12th month with a wow, as I participate in the A to Z Blog Challenge<\/a> in April. <\/p>\n

Rather than just posting 3 books a week, I will be posting on 26 of April’s 30 days according to the Challenge’s alphabetical schedule, starting with A on Sunday, April 1 (no fooling<\/a>). <\/p>\n

Naturally, trying to align the alphabet<\/a> with the stack of great YA books that I want to recommend isn’t as easy as I’d hoped. Using book titles would be simple – if I had some that began with X or didn’t have multiple titles that all start with the same letter. Ditto for authors’ names, last or first. So, there will be a few entries that get shoehorned into a letter slot because of their subject or a major character.<\/p>\n

But why do a blog challenge in the first place? You’ve heard that it takes 30 days to acquire a new habit<\/a>, so a month-long challenge with a set framework and some coaching will make your success more likely, as will being accountable to the challenge organizers and fellow bloggers as we exercise our blog-writing ‘muscles’ and encourage each other. <\/p>\n

On April 30th, my blog’s first birthday, I’ll take another deep breath and plunge into the full 31-day Wordcount Blogathon<\/a>, with a big thank-you to its host Michelle Rafter<\/a>. Yep, I finally began blogging so that I could participate in the 2011 Wordcount Blogathon. Lots of excellent advice, a forum to share our posts, guest post exchange – you should sign up for the 2012 version, too! It’s free, you won’t get any sales pitches, and your blogging muscles will get great exercise. Sign-ups will begin soon, so I’ll remind you!<\/p>\n

Ready, set, April!
**kmm
(photograph of lichen on oak branch (c)2012 H.B. Massingill Jr. – thanks, Dad!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Did you ever get a “little set in your ways”?Is it time to push your writing muscles a bit?A blog challenge may be just what you need! With over 150 book recommendations, BooksYALove heads into its 12th month with a wow, as I participate in the A to Z Blog Challenge in April. Rather than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[19,98],"tags":[82,55,11,97,110,56,35,150,61],"class_list":["post-158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reflective","tag-blogging","tag-books","tag-communication","tag-habits","tag-online","tag-reading","tag-surprises","tag-twitter","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}