How did it start?
Do you know the saying about little acorns growing into big trees? Well that’s what happened here.
It began with an award
Alyson Sheldrake invented the ABC blogging award, which stands for Awesome Blog Content, and she was kind enough to bestow it on my blog, Julie Dawn Fox in Portugal. My acceptance post had to include a simple A to Z list of words or phrases that meant something to me but without explanations as to why they were important.
Which led to a Personal A to Z of Portugal
I’d just read a few of the A to Z of Travel posts that were doing the rounds but my blog is about living and travelling in Portugal so I didn’t feel I could use the general travel meme.
Then inspiration struck and I decided to combine these two alphabetical challenges and write a Personal A to Z of Portugal as a single post with paragraphs for each letter. I soon found I had a lot to say about some letters, enough for a separate article, and that’s when I considered turning my A to Z into a series of posts. After checking that I could think of at least one potential subject for each letter of the alphabet, I was fizzing with enthusiasm for my new project. After all, I now had ideas for at least 26 new posts!
Which was surprisingly popular
I thought I’d better explain what I was doing so I wrote an introduction to my Personal A to Z of Portugal to accompany the first post in the series, A is for Alva, the River Alva. As soon as I published it, fellow Portugal bloggers wanted to join in and began to spread the word. Within a matter of hours bloggers from around the world had shown an interest in writing their own Personal A to Z of other countries and ‘My Personal A to Z’ went global!
Spreading the fun to everyone
But why stop at countries? There’s been so much excitement and enthusiasm for this blogging challenge already that I’ve decided to throw it open to all bloggers, no matter what you write about.
A space to share links and meet other participating bloggers
As other bloggers took up the challenge, it quickly became clear that we needed a system for collating and sharing links. Alyson set up a page on her blog to do this and began making badges for the A to Zs but now that the doors are wide open to all bloggers and topics, we decided it would be easier for everyone to set up a separate website.
This way, you know exactly where to come to upload your links and excerpts of your posts and you’ll be able to meet other bloggers who’ll keep you motivated you as you blog through the alphabet.
If this sounds like fun to you, join in with a personal A to Z of your own. If you want to know more before you start, just visit our FAQs page.
