All around the blogosphere today {21st March, 2014}, there is a curious announcement floating onto blogs!
It’s the *official* day to *reveal!* our A TO Z CHALLENGE THEME!
{Jorie is #96!}
IF those of us signed up to reveal our theme ahead of the start date for the challenge &/or if we chose to have a ‘theme’ for the challenge itself; the reveal gives us a way to promote ourselves. The idea behind the challenge is one that I fancied myself because it’s a creative challenge to seek out *26!* topics which correlate with the ‘letter’ of the ‘day’ in which each letter from A to Z is spotlighted!
Converse & Follow A to Z Challengers:
#AtoZChallenge & #A2ZReveal {alt. #AtoZReveal}
IF you’d like to discover {new!} bloggers of whom are signed into the challenge, scope out the *1445+* participating!
The beauty of the A to Z is it’s not limited by your imagination nor of the dedication of your blog!
{Jorie is #558!}
***Announcing my theme
for A to Z Challenge 2014:***
Jorie Loves Inspirational Stories
: An Alphabet Essay in 26 parts :
I felt I had known *exactly!* what I was going to blog about during the A to Z Challenge when I first signed up to participate; however, it wasn’t until I had this lovely serendipitous conversation with fellow challenger Amrita {of , The Book Drifter & Drifting Traveller! @Amrita86} through Twitter, where I realised I had short-changed myself by half! I had a theme which was truly etching out the heart of who ‘Jorie’ is not merely of ‘Jorie Loves A Story’ but the ‘Jorie’ in the traditional sense ‘in real life’. Yet, I had mistakenly left out a very elementary and key ingredient from my theme and from my overall sketchings of what my A to Z Challenge topics would reflect! I am blessed and grateful to have crossed paths with Amrita not only as a lovely new bookish friend, but I am blessed to have signed into a blog challenge which is going to become a peppered essay reflecting to the world the insight behind why I blog!
I am hopeful those who are making the rounds for the ‘theme reveals’ will return back to Jorie Loves A Story starting on 1st April, 2014 to see what “A” reveals! And, prior to the beginning of the challenge, I invite you to duck over to my Story Vault and see if you want to wander around a bit ahead of time!
Advance notice of each day you will find
NEW posts arriving on each A to Z Challenge Blogger’s blog!
IF you want to show your support for the A to Z Challenge,
go pick up the Supporter Badge for your own blog!
This marks my first post for:
IF you are participating in the A to Z Challenge, I’d be keen to know a bit more about you, why you opted to participate, and what you blog about? What inspired you to seek out topics for 26 letters and to give your new readers & visitors interest to make your blog their next visit whilst hoppin’ around the blogosphere? What do you think is the greatest challenge of the A to Z? What is your greatest hope for an outcome once May arrives and the challenge is completed!? IF you’re a visitor following along with those of us who are participating, what attracted you to the challengers who are participating!? What are you enjoying the most in anticipation?
A to Z Challenge Archive of Posts:
- Letter A: Day 1 Anthologies
- Letter B: Day 2 Biographical Fiction
- Letter C: Day 3 Classical Fiction
- Letter D: Day 4 Dragon Fiction
- Letter E: Day 5 Equality in Literature
- Letter F: Day 6
{Sources: A to Z Participant 2014 participant badge & calendar grid of days provided by A to Z Challenge and used with permission.}
Copyright © Jorie Loves A Story, 2014.
A blog theme about why you blog–how ingenious. I can’t wait to read all about it. Personally, I can’t imagine coming up with 26 reasons, and then to have them follow the alphabet…You are a daring person, one to be admired. I’ll be back!
Thank you for your kind reply! :)
Its going to be a multi-dimensional alphabet essay, in which I examine components of what I love to blog about as much as the essence of answering the question within my theme of choice! :)
Yes, it is daring — even for the girl whose writing the A to Z Challenge posts!! Happy to see you return!
Alphabet essay…interesting…
Hallo Ms. Jones,
What can I say!? It sort of blossomed out of the idea of the challenge itself and nestled into where I know my own heart would love to take the A to Z letters! :) Hope to see you visiting in April!
I enjoyed your post. I joined the challenge because I love pushing myself to do that which I don’t think I can. Keeping up with writing 26 posts in one month and reading lots of others sounds like a challenge I couldn’t refuse. :-)
http://debioneille.blogspot.com
Hallo Ms. Debioneille,
I completely mirror your sentiments about how the challenge not only pushes each of us to define our posts for 26 days in April but to encourage us to reach out past our own goals & endeavour to follow alone with others as they achieve theirs at the very same time! Here’s to see how we all come out of it by the end of April!
Happy reading & blogging!
I love a good, ambitious challenge, because let’s face it — ambitious anything makes life so much more interesting. I appreciate your look on things, what you have planned for us. I will do my best to return as often as I can and follow you along. See you again soon.
Silvia @
SilviaWrites
Hallo Ms. Silvia,
I completely agree with you! Without ambition our lives would turn quite dull indeed! I like challenging myself with blog challenges & reading challenges because more than naught they take me outside my comfort zones & give me the ability to reach out to new readers & bloggers alike! I love the learning curve aspect of it all as well! Thank you for your compliments & I look forward to your next visits!
Happy reading!
Hi Jorie,
Thanks for the shout out on Twitter and for the blog visit. This is my second year of the AtoZ, my theme is books to compliment my blog. I started the blog after I wrote my own book, after last years AtoZ it really took off and now I review books and support writers and authors by promoting their work as much as I can. I love reading and it all just seems to flow from there. Good luck with your own challenge, I’ll come back and read your posts.
Hallo Ms. Amber,
You’re quite welcome for the shout-outs! I thought it would be a nice way to add a bit of a personal touch when making my rounds to all the lovely bloggers who are participating in the *big!* Theme Reveal! :) I found it especially interesting how the challenge sparked a book! I find that encouraging as I think all of us are inspiring each other, and sometimes the inspiration comes back to alight on our own shoulders!
I must say that is one thing that I *love!* about my bookish blog: being able to support writers & authors as they release novels & stories which soak into my heart and give my imagination a bit of a dance through literary avenues I may or may not have ventured into! :) I love reading and being able to share my reading life with others is a blessing; we have this in common!
Thank you for the luck! And, I equally look forward to your posts in return! Until then!
Hi Jorie! Wow – an alphabet essay! Everyone’s themes are soooo different, and I love the diversity of what I’ve seen in the theme reveals so far! One of the things I think is interesting about your topic is that you’ll be talking about why you blog, and I’m curious to see the reasons why other people blog too – I’m sure your posts will spark some great discussion! When I got into blogging several years ago, I was missing half the point of blogging (IMO) – that is, interacting with the blogging community. I’ve learned so much in the past month alone visiting A to Z participants – can’t wait to see what April has in store for all of us! <3
Hallo Marci! :)
Quite lovely to see you alight tonight on my blog! :) And, the wicked sweet shout-out you gave me touched my heart! That is one thing I believe all the challengers in April will appreciate as I will be hosting a heap of blog tours & authors throughout the month whilst our challenge is in progress! Of course, I’m not sure if they thought to scope out who or whom will be visiting JLAS by clicking on Bookish Events 2014, but I can say, there will always be *something!* quite awesome going on!
I think the reason I might have had the upper hand in that bit of it is because I spent nearly six months to a year visiting the book blogosphere prior to creating Jorie Loves A Story. I sort of had a jump-start on the bookish culture and the community within the blogosphere as relating to book bloggers, author blogs, writers in search of publisher blogs, and everything you can think of inter-related to the passion of ‘books’ & ‘authors’. I couldn’t wait to start participating in Bout of Books for instance which is this rather insane 7 day long readathon! Then, finding all the lovely people behind those blogs my heart felt as though it had grown!
You’ll love the challenge for this one reason, because I am seeing everyone is as friendly as I have known bloggers to be; warm, engaging, friendly, and happy to meet someone new! Its a great place to be active and I’m thankful our paths have crossed! :)
Yes, I do believe my essays will spark happy conversations!
That is my hope for April: bookishly lovely conversations!
Happy reading & blogging! :)
Sounds like a very thought-provoking theme, Jorie. I think the main reason people blog is to connect. Everyone wants their craft, their passion, their thoughts to matter. In a world where we can instantly connect across continents and seas, a kindred spirit is only a keystroke away:)
WriterlySam
Resident Bartender for the A to Z Theme Reveal Party!
Hallo, Hallo Writerly Sam!
I love your response to my proposed Question! I am happy you are digging my theme as well, because it truly will be a lovely one to write throughout April — so much so I get giddy just thinking about all the upcoming posts!! I think one of the best benefits of blogging & connecting on Twitter is *exactly!* what you said: it yields the ability to connect to kindred spirits we might not have crossed paths with otherwise! You have a great way with expressing your thoughts and I look forward to your posts!
Happy blogging!
Love your theme and looking forward to your posts! Thanks for stopping by mine :-) This should be fun!
Hallo Ms. Covella! :)
Thank you for the compliments for my theme! You’re quite welcome on stopping by your blog! Its one of the ones I’ll be visiting during the challenge! I’m using two previously made A2Z Blogger lists on Twitter by Patricia Lynne & Guilie Castillo! I think its going to rock, personally!
Happy reading!
I’ll will be back to read your posts during the challenge for sure. =)
Hallo Patricia Lynne,
Can you believe its nearly around the next hour when the A2Z Challenge will begin!? I have so many happy things coming up this week leading into April its simply an overflowing waterfall of joy! :) Thankful I had the chance to get to know you a bit ahead of all our posts going live! I look forward to your future visits, and I’ll be leaving a note on your blog tonight as well!
Happy reading & blogging!
An alphabet essay! That sounds so creative! I’ll definitely be back to check it out.
Hallo, Ms. Abram,
I was trying to sort out how to put my own spin on the challenge and still keep within the framework of why it was established! I felt going with essays and focusing on the letters as much as my ‘theme’ was the best way to accomplish everything I wanted too! :)
Look forward to your future visits!
Inspired by your incredibly organized blog I find my 52 blog posts challenge becoming very disciplined. Thanks to you too!I am very grateful to that ‘serendipitous (twitter) conversation’ indeed! Waiting with bated breath for 1st April 2014.
Hallo, Hallo Amrita!! :)
I was nearly stalking your blogs (yes both of them!) to see if you were going to ‘reveal’ a theme, but then, I remembered out of the fog of my head right now, that you were going to not use a theme!? I’ll duck back lateron though, because you had some keenly interesting posts up right now! And, I do agree with you about segregation: we should all be free to be together without being separated! :)
Oh, dear me!
Truly!?
Then, we each inspired the other – what bliss!
I’m on bated breath myself! I have a heap of lovely authors & blog tours throughout April; I have all the awesome content for BAPC (another blog posting challenge!) & for A2Z Challenge; plus, a few lovely surprises in-between like my “Booking the Rails” & “ChocLitSaturdays” features!! I have so much in the mix, its hard to come down from the cosmos!
Rock on, my dear friend!
You’re stellar for doing this A2Z twiceover! :)
I am a rather random person. If I had a theme I would be flustered thinking I have to stick to the same thing for a whole month!! In a weird way I do have a theme, randomness. To survive A2Z twice over I’ll be fitting in a few blog tours as well. Good publicity for the author and I just have to cleverly fit in a letter of the alphabet :)
Although, no such joy for the Drifting Traveller. I’ll have to cook, bake and run around London for travel inspiration. Did you see the book barge I posted a picture of? Guess what date in April will it feature on my blog?
If you are doing another blog challenge in April you must be scheduling an awful lot of posts too!