26 Letters

Respond to this Friday Faithfuls challenge by writing about the 2023 April A to Z challenge, or go with anything else that you think fits.  There used to be six more letters in the English Alphabet, but they were phased out and replaced by letters that do double duty.  No more changes have been done since the early 19th century and there is probably no need to worry that our current alphabet will keep on shrinking.  The Roman calendar originally consisted of 10 months in a year that was only 304 days, as they ignored the remaining 61 days, which fell in the middle of winter.  Around 700 BCE, King Numa Pompilius the legendary second king of Rome who succeeded Romulus amended the calendar by shortening the months slightly and adding the months of January and February, which increased the calendar to 355 days, and when this happened April was cut down to 29 days.  In the year 46 BCE, Julius Caesar introduced a new calendar system, the Julian calendar where he added ten days to the year and introduced the leap day.  In the new Julian calendar, April was expanded to 30 days.

The Blogging from A to Z is a challenge that starts beginning in April and your first post is supposed to use the letter A which will start on April 1st and continue every day thereafter except on Sundays, however since this year we will have 5 Sundays in April, you will need to create a post for the last Sunday.  You need to come up with a themed topic on something where you will be able to use every letter in the alphabet.  Once you write about your topic with the letter A, then you will continue on to your topic that uses the letter B as the theme, and so on until you finish on April thirtieth with the theme based on the letter Z.  Simply put, you post every day in April (except Sundays), and follow the alphabet.  Some special days proceed this challenge, being March 12- 18 where you are supposed to post your Theme Reveal and the Master List sign-up starts on March 26.

I enjoy these types of challenges that allow you to write ahead, and I have joined in this challenge every year starting in 2018, although I do my own thing and I don’t officially join in.  I read somewhere that the April A to Z blogging challenge was started by Arlee Bird in 2010 and that he supposedly won the NaNoWriMo writing challenge in 2009 and 2010, but I feel that everybody who enters is a winner.  I haven’t done any writing yet, but I think that I will be able to come up with a theme, which I hope will be interesting.  I have found that joining in on blogging challenges to be a great way to meet new bloggers.  These month-long challenges do take some effort and I am usually exhausted at the end, but I am also very satisfied with what I have done.  Some of the letters are more challenging to work with that the others.