The Great Theme Reveal

Anybody who’s read this blog for long knows I’m not much of a “theme” person. I have to drag themes kicking and screaming out of my novels, and most of the time, I have no particular desire to build or work with a theme. I’m not someone your tenth-grade English teacher would like. My tenth-grade English teacher(s) spent the entire year hinting about ways to do drugs in class, on the premise that stoned might be an improvement, and ultimately wound up being sainted for not killing me in my sleep.

At any rate, my theme for last year’s A-to-Z Challenge was a Fly-By-The-Seat-of-Your-Pants stroke of brilliance: Whatever the hell happens to pop into my head. It worked well enough. I made it through.

This year, I thought about doing an upbeat complicated relationships thing, because that always seems to work its way into my stories, but let’s be honest, I’m not really sure all my readers are up for a recitation of A-to-Z relationships, and quite frankly, it would almost certainly devolve into a list of rare and exotic paraphilias. Why no… I just needed something that started with the letter U. Why do you ask?

That could sure get thorny fast.

Do I really need a theme?

Okay, so the one that finally popped into my head was…

Words that begin with the letter M.

That doesn’t seem so unreasonable. I’ll need to add words that don’t begin with the letter M to make it fit the challenge, but with some effort, I think I can make it work.

Words that begin with the letter M it is, then.

If you want to join in the challenge, all the details are here.  Let me know if you’re playing along.

12 Comments

  1. Reply

    I think I’d like to try this! I’m also doing Camp NaNo, and I was always most productive if I had something to switch over to when I got stuck NaNoing (my Twitter and my blog were never more active than during NaNo!)

    So… no sign-up list, just use the tags, link your entries, and write (and comment/reply, of course)? If it’s that simple, I’d love to do it!

  2. Reply

    I think this is a great theme. You’re doubling down on the whole letter thing. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with during April. Thank you for stopping by my blog.

  3. Reply

    Hi! I love this challenge so much – I hope you have a blast this year! 😀 Last year I went with a theme that was too limiting and missed posting a few times, so this year I’m flying by the seat of my pants pretty much!

  4. Reply

    Certainly a unique take. Some (most) themes can tend to be a little limiting, so this is a good solution to that.

  5. Reply

    You got me at “I’m not much of a ‘theme’ person.” So am I. But for the A to Z Challenge, I’ll try again.

    I love to post whatever happens to pop into my head as well. Well, generally, I really just have a really broad theme, like my new theme for A to Z, and just go from there. (I tried to copy-paste the link here, but for some reason, I’m not being allowed to do that…Must be your settings, though.)

    Anyway, good luck to us! Keep on writing! 🙂

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