What I've Learned In the Last Four Months

 

The main thing that I've learned is that I'm doing well, but I'm not doing well. We'll start with the doing well part.

1.    I successfully transferred all my writing that was on HubPages and republished it here on my own nest of blogs. Everything has a home. I've also been able to regain access to all my writing on MyLot and have access to all the titles of writing that appeared on Bubblews. Anything worth saving from there can be rewritten. This was a huge undertaking for me, and I'm pretty pleased with myself.

2.    I have been actively writing and publishing new material on a regular basis. Considering my schedule, I give myself a pat on the back for that too. I'm three months ahead on humour stories and a month ahead on book reviews. I'm hoping to get further ahead on my other articles and have something new each week.

3.    Steady growth in my view numbers. We'll see if that continues into the fall. Monthly counts:

                    April     4709 views

                    May      7340 views

                    June      7488 views

                    July       7551 views

For the first time, Pico's Cycling Tales of the Road topped 2000 views for four consecutive months. Never managed that for more than two months. I have no reason to believe that we won't make a fifth month in August.

Where I feel like I'm failing is in promoting my work. I promote on Facebook and Twitter, and I'm barely getting any traction there. I feel like those platforms, as well as Google, are working against me. You can search my blog titles and article titles on Google, and it will not show you my work. As I learn, I'm trying to rectify that, but I'm told I might never get their attention. I'm not upset by that. I know that I will gain more success by just plugging away. I have ideas that will help promote my work, but I can't really get after that until I'm on my winter break.

If you've read this far and you like my work, there are a couple of things you can do to help that won't cost you a dime. My author's blog here is Grand Central Station for my writing. In the right-hand column, there are feeds for all the major pages I write on. Each page has links for the three latest posts on that page, including the ones I didn't promote. Blogger lets you follow me with your email, but who wants their email cluttered with an announcement for everything I write? Personally, I would just bookmark the page here and drop by for a visit every once in a while. 

Another thing you can do to help. When you read one of my posts that you really like. Please share it with your friends. At the bottom of this post, you will see a strip of social media icons. Those all allow you to share the article directly. I actually use them myself to promote my articles on Facebook and Twitter. Those two actions could make a big difference for me, and I would appreciate it a great deal. If I figure out how to track it, I would consider offering an incentive for doing so. Something along the lines of a percent-off coupon for my Etsy shop.

Update On Updates

 

Rosy Maple Moth

I want to post regular updates on my writing endeavors here, but I'm not sure how I'm going to go about it at this point. I don't plan to advertise these, so if you like what I'm doing here and want to keep up with it, I recommend following this Blog. That should advise you whenever I post a new item here. I'm not sure how often I will post. Maybe once per month or every two weeks. I do have a little more time to devote to it now that the Hubpages articles are all set up to be posted. I'd love to post something every week, but my time is limited, and I'm sure the quality would suffer.

I did finish updating the feeds in the right-hand column. The woodworking page is only showing two items, even though there are already three posted. I'm sure it is just a glitch, and once I post another one, it will correct itself. That list of feeds does act as a doorway to all my other Blog pages. Everything I'm writing is available there or eventually will be. If you want to keep up with any of my writing, that's another good reason to follow this particular page. I'm currently posting three or four times per week, and it will always show up linked there.

This week, I also regained access to all the stuff I wrote on MyLot. I'm not intending to do much over there. My main reason for visiting is to pick up the stories that should have a permanent home on my own site here. Most of the stuff I'm saving will end up on the Laughs, Giggles & Guffaws page.

One final surprise for me is that my old archive had a page that contained a list of story links back to Bubblews. Those links are, of course, all dead, but they contain titles, and I will be able to rewrite the ones I wanted to save from over there as well. Discovering that was very encouraging for me.

I post without any fanfare on Pico's Writing Practice sometimes as well. I might make mention of those articles in the update posts. Homesteading -The Detritus of Another Man's Dreams was posted this week quietly because it needed a home. I didn't advertise because I have become friends with the man who suffered through what the article shows, and I didn't want to flaunt it in his face. I know the memory is associated with quite a bit of personal pain for him. We met through work years after I originally posted this story on Hubpages. If I posted this to Facebook, it would likely show up on his feed. He's a good man, and I know he doesn't mind the existence of this article, but I don't think it's right to wave it deliberately in his face.

That's it for now. I will only post updates when I feel I have something worth mentioning. Big thanks to all my regular readers.

I'm Astonished

I'll be honest. I haven't paid very much attention to my writing in quite a long time; my blogs here have been just languishing. Been busy working hard at life. What little writing I was doing got shaken up, and that brought me back here to see if I could salvage work that has lost its home. I didn't expect to find that these blogs have a bigger readership than the site I was focusing on.

Like Bubblews, HubPages is going the way of the Dodo. I was slowly amassing pennies there. Now I'm gaining nothing. I have already been able to save all the written text I had on the site, and for the next couple of weeks, I'll be working on recovering any images that I don't already have backed up on my computer. It appears that I will still have access for a while longer. That's good, and I am grateful that I don't have to chase after this in a panic.

MyLot doesn't like my computer for some reason, and I can't effectively write there and haven't been able to in quite some time. With the HubPages announcement, I got really discouraged. I'm just over a year away from retirement, and I was hoping that between my writing and my artistic woodworking, I could supplement my pensions. I felt like I was watching everything get dismantled just when I was hoping to be able to start gearing up my efforts. Between a mail strike and tariff wars, my woodworking was taking a hit at the same time. Seeing the view counts here really perked me up. A couple of Etsy sales, and I don't feel like I'm close to bleeding money anymore.

What this means is that this blog is now the centre of my writing universe. It will also provide a link back to my woodworking. My old HubPages articles will be revamped and distributed where they seem to fit. I will likely add at least one other companion blog. No worries, that will be evident in the sidebar. You'll be able to see anything new that comes up there. There is a lot of work involved, and I am a busy man. It will take time for everything to come together.

I appreciate the attention my writing has gotten here. I'm still a little flabbergasted at the number of views. Thank you to all my readers.

 

Proud Of My Daughter's Latest Accomplishment

My daughter Mieke won first place for June in Writing.com's monthly "What a Character" contest. She enters this contest regularly because it is the premier contest on that site. It is a challenge and the competition is always excellent. She previously finished second in this same contest on two other occasions. This is her first win.

This month's prompt was: Write a story about a character whose best friend is something other than another human being. It can be a pet, robot, inanimate object, imaginary friend, or anything else you can come up with!

Her is the link to her winning entry: http://p15.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/2086966-Rhakanirs-Raven . It is restricted to writing.com members.

As a writer and her father, I'm especially proud of her writing accomplishments. She is hoping to catch on at some point with one of the bigger more prestigious publishing houses. I think she has the talent and the work ethic to achieve that someday.

Congratulations Mieke!

Writing Taking a Backseat

Courtesy Pixabay

I'm sure this is already obvious to my readers, but it is worth an explanation at this point. This year has since January already, amped up pressure on the family finances. I'm spending a great deal of time trying to get things on a solid footing. Every time I think we've made progress something else happens to make it worse again. I want to write a lot but too much of my focus is on other issues.

Will it get better? I'm not even sure. So much is up in the air at this point. I'm hoping that my hours at work increase back up to sustainable levels or a workable alternative can be found. If there was a stable nearby alternative I'd be after it in a heartbeat.

Something else has come up which will also eat into my writing time. Apparently there is a nearby house that is going to be demolished to make way for a new one. I may be given access to all the materials from the old house. That would be awesome but a lot of work and I'm not sure I have the tools to make it all happen. This would give me everything I need to build a real wood shop. It would also allow me to make extensive additions/renovations to our existing abode. There might even be material for a few other things. We came to New Brunswick to start a woodworking business before being derailed and if everything goes right this might put us close to back on track. I'd have a hard time passing that opportunity up even if it cost me a lot of writing time.

I've once again shifted my writing focus as well. I'm more interested in working on writing that will potentially give me some kind of financial return. I am working on preparing “Rat in the Shadows” for the next step. I made significant progress during the week and expect to continue that work.

I hope to break through all these distractions before the end of June. Something has to give. What I'm dealing with right now can't last. This status quo is not sustainable.