After getting going on my RPG blog ad keeping up with it, I have decided to join the April, 2014 A to Z Blogging Challenge for this, my genealogy blog also. For this year, my ideas are generic to genealogy as a whole. I will try to add something to each one about my own genealogical research. I selected the Education (ED) category, since their is not Genealogy category. Miscellaneous (MI) appears to be the next closest category. This blog is the 750th entry on the list.

As with my RPG blog, I got a power start on the April blogging challenge with this blog. I made a title and copied each letter graphic for all 26 of the A to Z posts and scheduled them for the appropriate day. Now just to write each post before the scheduled day.   I came up with a topic for all but two of the days. For several days I have a sentence or paragraph to get started.

My suggestion to anyone who wants to do any kind of blog challenge is to make a draft  with a placeholder title and schedule them for the appropriate day and add the tags you know apply. When you actually write for that day adjust the title and category tags as needed. I know I am not a regular blogger with tons of followers, but for me that gets the item out there. If it is not a challenge that needs something tomorrow, you can focus on the ones for which you have solid ideas. For the ones you aren’t sure about or have multiple ideas, you have a place to add your ideas. If you have enough ideas, you can split them off as drafts for future use for next year, or some other blog challenge. Doing the 40th Anniversary Blog Hop helped me come up with a ton of ideas and remember things I wanted to record for later. Instead of having 3 or 4 or more posts for one day, I realized this morning that I should have scheduled them so that I had one every day, so I’d be into next week by now.

To sum up, my suggestion is to let your tool, blogging software of your choice, do the hard parts. Put in a framework so all you have to do is flesh it out. I use WordPress and am self-hosted, so I know my suggestion works for WordPress users. I would imagine Blogger and other blogging tools would allow you to do the same.