Anniversary!

One year ago my life changed. My perspective about writing shifted so dramatically that, for a moment, I believed I would never accomplish my dreams and feared the inevitable rejections that are sure to come from many agents and publication houses. I am, perhaps, still afraid of the unknown responses I will receive from sending out my manuscript, but that's not what my focus has been over the past year.

Aside from the necessities of life (school, work, relationships, etc.), I have been primarily focused on A Writer's Landscape. A year ago today, I posted my first blog and began an interesting journey of self-realization. Looking back over these many posts, I've noticed several things:

~ I really do enjoy writing poetry (which is a good thing because I'm not in a poetry class!)
~ When life is strenuous, I lay off my writing. This is an unfortunate side effect of stressful schedules and hardships.
~ I dive into something so intensely for a while, and then abandon it quite abruptly. Examples are my Haiku and "The Changed Earth." I can't decide if this is a good thing or if I need to focus more. On one hand, I get to experience and work with many different genres. On the other hand, I might leave things unfinished.
~ I am writing more now than I ever have in my life.

Lets see... Shall we analyze the statistics of my blog? The easiest one to show is what I've actually written. I made a commitment (several times) to write a blog for every day of the year. This would accumulate to 365 blogs. Unfortunately I didn't quite make it to this beautiful number. However, I did write 249 blogs in 1 year, bringing my 'grade' to a 68.2%. Is this good or bad? I feel like it's an accomplishment for me! This year, perhaps, I can break 70% and hit at least 75% of my goal (which still stands at 1 a day for a year since I didn't really manage to complete this commitment).

On another front, my Facebook fan-page currently has 251 fans. This is about half of the number I want before I start courting an agent. Of these 251 fans, approximately 120 of them are 'active users' of my fan-page, which I believe means they at least read my posts and/or look at my fan-page. The only saddening thing about my fan-page is how little anyone uses the discussion boards. I think one of my new goals is to refocus the discussions and get my fans to be more active on them! I want to discuss my work. I want to dive into what I write (cause sometime's my words are very subconscious and I don't really know what's going on in the verse).

Finally, my statcounter, which is clever and creepy, informs me that the average time spent on my blog is approximately 2:31 minutes (given the last six months worth of data). I've watched this number rise and fall and stabilize. At one point, I was down to 1 minute. I felt tragically demoralized; but I figured there are a lot of look-i-loos who just happen to stumble upon my blog and aren't looking for literature. I hope the time starts to rise again. Six months ago the average was 8 minutes. That was a beautiful number! The longest stay on my blog, which I think I have to thank Chad for, was 45 minutes (according to my stat-websites). WOOHOO! I like the look of that. (LOVE YOU). And the spread of the viewers has diversified greatly. I don't think there's a region in the United States that doesn't have someone looking at my blog occasionally. Then there are the foreigners as well: Australia, Russia (oddly), Denmark, Canada, Japan, South Korea, and Brazil. I would say this is a good spread, though I'm not sure how they came upon my blog, or whether they stayed for any duration. C'est la vie.

I guess the question before me is: "Where do I want to go from here?"

The answer is a little more complex than I anticipated months ago (when contemplating my blog's big birthday). I want to interact more with you, my readers. I want to know what you want to see. I want to know what you enjoy, what you don't like, what could be improved. I want to talk with you all, and have those conversations be available for others who may stumble upon my creations here. I want to see more active users on my Fan-Page who have questions or want to have discussions about things. I want to write more, and I want to know what you want to read.

However, for myself: I will keep on writing. Seeing as I'm in a poetry class at the moment, I'll be putting up a vast array of poems that we'll be working on. There will also be a lot more critiques of what I'm reading for that class. And as I'm going through a major life change right now, there will be a lot of deep, symbolic things to come (which I know are harder to understand, but that's how I deal with things).

I'm honored and thankful that you're joined me on my journey over the past year! I hope you stick around and continue to find enjoyment in the words I'm writing.

With Much Love and Happiness,

J Hart F