Since May 2005 I have written a thousand blog posts! Those posts contain around 300,000 words which is longer than any of my novels, though, fortunately not longer than all of them put together. I am verbose! Yay for verbosity!
And yay for blog statistics! Here are some other numbers:
The posts here average 13 comments each. Given that when I started I was lucky to get any comments at all that number startles me. Of course, I have all of you to thank! Yay readers and commenters and lurkers and the occasional drive-by visitors. I love youse all.
The numbers of words in the comments is approaching 800,000. Astounding, eh?
I’ve averaged just under a post a day. But in the beginning I did not post nearly as much as I do now. The addiction has crept up on me slowly. Now going a day without blogging leaves me jittery and discombobulated. Must. Blog. Or. Die.
My most popular post by a very big margin is How to Write a Novel. Every day people arrive here to imbibe my novel writing wisdom after googling “how to write a novel”. So I recommend all writers post their own thoughts on same and give it the same title. Cunning, eh? Though maybe you should be less silly about it than I was.
Other than “how to write a novel”, my name, and titles of my books, the most popular search terms that lead here are “quokkas”, “Jill Grinberg” (my agent), “crazy writers”, “Sheryl Swoopes”, “Andrew Symonds”, “how to rewrite” and “what should I wear”. I feel that’s an excellent representation of the blog seeing as how writing and publishing, fashion, quokkas, women’s basketball, and cricket are some of my main topics. I am saddened, though, that “zombie” leads so few people here. Must work on that. Expect oodles more zombie posts.
When I first started this blog it was read by my mum, my dad, my sister and a few of my friends. Now I average over a thousand visits a day from people I’ve mostly never met. Who’d’ve thunk it?
In the olden days a thousand visits in one day meant that John Scalzi or one of the other internet gods had linked to me, now it’s standard and seems to be on the rise. Yay! And THANK YOU!
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before but I love blogging. LOVE it. I love the speed and ease of it, having an idle thought and being able to publish it almost instantaneously. And I especially love the responses. The comments you leave—even when you’re completely wrong—yes, I’m looking at all you lunatic car and coffee worshippers—not to mention Diana and her crazy outlining love—make doing this way more fun.
It’s such a contrast to the novel-writing. I write the novel, send it to a few first readers, wait and wait, get a few responses, rewrite, send to agent and editor, wait and wait, rewrite, send it back to editor, wait and wait, rewrite, and so on, until it makes its way through copy editing and proofing and finally at least a year later winds up being read by more than that small handful of people. Is maddeningly slow. The instantaneousness of blogging keeps me sane while I wait.
Because of blogging I get to enjoy people’s thoughts and responses and teasing and off-topic musings. I watch conversations emerge and go in places I never would’ve expected and I get to join in and generally feel less alone. Tis a wondrous thing.
Honestly, I don’t know what I would have done without blogs. Not just my own but all the other fabulous blogs out there that make me laugh and think and keep me informed and giggling and more in touch with what’s going on at home and elsewhere.
Bless you intramanets and blog world. I adore being part of it.
Here’s to another thousand posts. Another billion!