This Week In The Blogverse

            Writing a weekly feature about all of the great blogs you’ve discovered carries the risk that you will eventually run out of subject matter. However, the problem I didn’t foresee was that some of the blogs would have multiple points of interest and I would have to make a choice about which one to spotlight first and wonder how soon I should return to discuss the rest.

            Rachael Harrie has created that very conundrum for me this week. I feel that all of her blogging efforts are a gold mine of opportunities for an unpublished author like me.
            This time out I want to focus on the blogging challenges she offers on a regular basis. For April it was the A to Z Blogging Challenge. She painstakingly listed a different challenge for each day of the month. Wow, that had to have been a real brain buster to come up with that many variations on the A to Z theme.
            Kudos to Rachael for giving so much of her time to host these challenges.
            Participating in a well organized blog challenge offers several benefits to the up and coming writer. One of the most important of these being the opportunity for you to network with your fellow authors. Rachael’s challenges receive an excellent level of participation. You will be submitting creative entries along-side other writers in your chosen genre.
            These challenges represent a fertile field for you to harvest new followers. Each entry you post gives readers another reason to fall in love with your writing. It may be the first time they’ve read any of your work or it could be that this time you handled a theme in a way that really won them over. I know that each time I joined in one of Rachael’s challenges I have seen my number of followers grow.
            During the challenges the participants are encouraged to leave comments about the entries. This may give you a chance to receive feedback on your writing from a larger pool of readers than you normally reach. Although, I don’t recommend you use this as a gage of your writing skill, it can be useful in getting a general idea of how the readers are reacting to it.
            The challenges are the prefect time to stretch those writing muscles and try something new. Write outside of your regular genre. Test out an idea you have for a plot. Introduce a character you’re considering using in a novel. Write it and see how it turns out. Maybe you’ll get a few suggestions on how you can change it up or otherwise improve it.  
            And lastly, it’s fun. I don’t recommend forsaking your work-in-progress to do these, but a small break can sometimes be helpful. Rachael is wonderful at providing prizes for participating in the challenges and winning one of them can certainly make your day.

            Drop by Rachael’s blog and say “Howdy.” (Okay, you can just say Hi.)