The festival of words

So it’s the 7th and final day of the Seven days festival of words. This is my first ever blogging challenge and I am so glad that I was able to put up six posts on the theme Seven. And here’s my 7th post on my experience with the blogging festival.
1. I learnt that I should not enter a challenge without preparation. Though Corinne had announced the festival early in August, I joined the team only in the last moment. I had no specific plan or theme in mind and each day I would sit down and think what to write. All my posts were last minute thoughts and I suppose it is very much evident in all my posts.
2. On the second day itself I had trouble due to my procrastination. I had completed writing a post, but the proofreading and posting was pending and when I sat to do it in the midnight, the internet failed making me unable to post it. But thankfully I was allowed to link my post the next day and continue participation.
3. I came to know that the chance of putting up a blog post is high when I type directly in the blog draft page. I used to write posts in word and then copy paste to my blog. But most of those posts got abandoned midway. I have almost 20 incomplete posts in the word file. But whenever I typed directly in the draft, I completed the post in one go. I started doing it from the third day.
4. You don’t actually participate in a festival, when you just put up posts but don’t interact with other bloggers. The whole point about this festival was building up a blogging community where bloggers meet new bloggers, interact with each other, share ideas, provide encouragement and learn a lot from each other. I could somehow manage posting everyday but interaction took a back seat. Actually I have not visited as many blogs or commented on as many blogs as I used to do before this challenge. Now that the pressure to post is over, I would catch up with all the missed posts 🙂
5. Writing a fiction that too within limitations was something I thought was impossible for me. But I could write a story with not just one, but two constraints ( incorporating both seven colours of VIBGYOR and seven numbers from seven to one ). I wrote the first line 8 different ways but couldn’t continue and then once I wrote the line 9th time, the words just kept coming and I finished writing it in 5-10 minutes 🙂 While posting I noticed that ‘TWO’ was missing, then I had to think for another 10-15 minutes to include it in the story 🙂 The outcome may not be that great, but I am so happy that I could do it.
6. There are people who sleep walk, but I am the weird one who sleep posts.The fifth day I put Babs to bed and sleepily typed the post. But Babs got up again and while nursing him back to sleep, I too dozed off. I got up suddenly and found my laptop still open on the bed and my glasses still on. And finally I published the post in half sleep and forgot to add the link. I added it the next day.
7. I have found many awesome bloggers through this festival and have added them to my blog roll. I was also fortunate to get many new visitors to my blog and their comments made my day 🙂
Thank you all for your time, love and encouragement. It means a lot to me.

And I want to Thank Babs too for making it possible for me to blog every day. Babs is a late sleeper and after using each and every technique to put him to bed early for nearly 18 months, I have come to terms with the fact. He would either sleep at 12.00 and get up in the morning or after lot of efforts sleep at 9.00 or 10.00 to only get up at 11.00 and play till 4.00 am ! So I have chosen to go with the first option. If babs had followed the sleep pattern I could not have written even a single post. But surprisingly this whole week he slept by 10.30. And I who was waiting for months for him to sleep early so that I can get that extra one and a half hours of sleep, sacrificed my precious sleep for blogging !

I am taking part in The Write Tribe Festival of Words 1st-7th September 2013.