Dr. Tanya’s latest Blogging Insights question is all about expectations. She wants to know:
Has your blog turned out more or less as you expected or totally different?
I started this blog, my fifth iteration of blogging, in May of 2017 and it pretty much was progressing according to plan (i.e., as expected). Then WordPress unexpectedly announced that it would be shutting down its Daily Post, a one-word writing prompt that I had been regularly participating in since the beginning of my blog, effective June 1, 2018.
That was when I made the decision to create my own one-word daily prompt — Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka “FOWC”). It was designed to fill the void after WordPress bailed on its own daily word prompt.
I had never planned to get into posting writing prompts for other bloggers to use for inspiration. But as I look back on my decision to post my own daily one-word prompt, that decision did, indeed, change the nature of my blog in an unexpected way.
FOWC with Fandango was very well received. And over time, I added other regular writing prompts:
- Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge — a weekly prompt on Mondays where I post a photo and challenge bloggers to create their own posts based upon the photo I selected.
- Fandango’s Provocative Question — a weekly prompt on Wednesdays where I pose what I hope is a provocative question that will get bloggers to think, to be creative, and to response.
- Fandango’s Friday Flashback — a weekly prompt on Fridays where I reach back into my archives and repost something I posted on the same date in a previous year and encourage other bloggers to do the same in order to expose their newer readers to some of their earlier posts that those newer readers might never have seen, or to remind their longer term readers of posts that they might not remember.
- Fandango’s Who Won the Week — a weekly prompt on Sundays where I encourage bloggers to look back at the week that just ended and to select who (or what) they think “won” that week and to write their own posts about who/what they chose and why.
So, to answer Dr. Tanya’s question, I certainly never expected to be posting one daily blogging prompt and four weekly blogging prompts when I started “This, That, and the Other” just over three years ago.
This, That, and the Other 
What a marvelous progression of your blog.
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Thanks.
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You’re welcome 😉
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I used to enjoy Fandango’s Storytime.
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I may have to consider bringing that back.
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Very creative prompts too! 😍
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Thanks, Paula. As are yours.
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Thanks!
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The loss of the Daily Prompt ended up being a positive thing for you and for many other people who now enjoy your challenge posts.
I didn’t really have any expectations of how my blogs would turn out when I began. I was just focussed on making sure I kept writing. One unexpected thing that I do find is that now when I am searching for doll information on Google, the search results often turn up my old posts. I certainly didn’t expect that.
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Well a blog focusing on dolls is a narrow niche, so that doesn’t surprise me.
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I was dismayed, like you, to see the Daily Prompt disappear. I think you and the others who have begun daily prompts filled the void very well indeed! Of course my favorite of your wonderful prompts is “FPQ” each week, but I’ve had fun pulling up an oldie but goodie on your Friday Flashback and I’m interested to see what “Storytime” is all about. Congrats Fandango! You’re doing an AMAZING job!
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Thank you, Melanie. Share a Your World is one of my favs; I’m so glad you took it over from Cee.
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Easy to check out, easy to read…heck I had developed to leave a commment!
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It is so useful for the rest of us that your blog evolved in the direction of so many prompts that provide the rest of us with so much blogging inspiration.
I wish I could participate in all the prompts that you organise but …… life happens!
I have enjoyed doing FOWC and FPQ several times.
Thanks for providing so much blogging inspiration.
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Thanks, Tanya. And I have really enjoyed your Blogging Insights series.
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My pleasure.
And you have really made my day !
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Three years? It doesn’t seem that long ago when you popped onto the scene. I don’t follow all your prompts, but I don’t follow a lot of prompts these days. I used to, back when WP was posting them.
I particularly like the photo of the week posting because it was a single picture prompt and some amazing photographers participated. I learned a lot just by looking at what they did.
I seem to have developed a limit to how much I can write in a day and it is less than it was. The problem is physical — I have developed some serious repetitive motion issues from too much keyboarding — and mental. It takes me time to integrate photos and text. I also like to do a little research on many things. I spend more time editing than I do writing or taking pictures.
I also have come to value my “spare time.” There seems to be a lot less of it now and I can’t figure out why since I’m doing the same things i was doing before, which is to say, not much. May age is creeping up.
But I read you most of the time. Not every post. I don’t have time to read half the posts that breeze into my email. Maybe not even a quarter. I try to get to everyone at some point in the week, but some weeks just disappear. The past three years have disappeared. if hizzoner is re-elected, I will do my best to be unconscious for the entire term.
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Let’s hope he doesn’t get re-elected! I feel you about not having the time to read all the posts that show up in my reader. There just aren’t enough hours in the day to write and publish my own posts and read every post from every blogger I follow, many, if not most, of whom post multiple times a day. I feel bad about that, but I do need to spend time in the real world, ya know.
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