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My drug of choice is writing––writing, art, reading, inspiration, books, creativity, process, craft, blogging, grammar, linguistics, and did I mention writing?

Thursday, August 1, 2013

Meet Indem Niffy and Look at some Wild Numbers

I know many of you already know Cathamel, but for those who don't, she is my muse.  Not to be confused with the patron/muses of course, who are more "real world" in their support. Cathamel inspires me, winds me up, whispers ideas in my ear and once in a while even takes over blogging for me.

Plus she is the one that helps me out when I can't think of the word on the tip of my tongue.

She also pushes me, sometimes despite what I think I'm capable of.  She can be...difficult in her motivational techniques in a Darth Vader/new-ways-to-motivate-them kind of way, and I'm not just smoothing over certain words like "taskmaster" or "excruciating pain" because she's coiled tightly around my neck and digging her claws into the base of my skull.

A couple of years ago, life was pretty tough for Cathamel.  I spent a lot of time working on expository papers for school, and didn't get to a lot of creative writing.  She went hungry as many days as she ate, and when she got creative ju-ju at all it was just a few minutes I was able to steal away from an impacted schedule.  Plus my schedule changed from day to day, so she never had a particularly good sense of consistency from me.  She was just struggling to survive.  But since I started Writing About Writing, her life has been pretty sweet.  She feasts most days, and has a little something something daily with few exceptions.  So of course, now that everything is going well, it has thrown into sharp relief those things in her life which are lacking.  (Or at least that's what she said to me when she thought I didn't know she was quoting the recently promoted Commodore Norrington from Pirates of the Caribbean.)

For an immortal deity like a muse, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs isn't quite the checklist it might be for a human.  Seeing as Cath IS self-actualization for someone else (me), the process of giving me and feeding off of my creative energy is actually most of what she needs, so it doesn't quite work to run right up the pyramid.  But since she's been forced into the shape of a wooden dragon from Chinatown instead of some hottie in a toga, she can't get companionship through her normal trick of trolling frat parties for horny college guys who don't seem to mind that she's got someplace to be early the next morning.

So she has been bugging me for companionship.  Specifically another dragon who she assures me will come to life just like she does once it's been in her inspiring presence.  She made it clear that her preference was a Western type dragon because they have that hot exotic look she likes so much.

I found a couple during my trip to Vegas, and put it to a quick question of my readers.  It had to be quick since I was with a hungry pregnant woman who was starting to nibble on my right arm, and if I didn't get out of there to the Aria buffet, there was going to be an incident.  The sort of incident that ends with me having nothing but a bone arm for my right arm--which is really a lot less cool if I'm not a dark necromancer in a fantasy novel, but just a normal dude who has been partially eaten alive.

Meet Imden Niffy.
Right next to an authentic
 dragon wine holder....thing.

This was the guy we ended up not picking.
He just looks too cranky.













So after a very swift round of feedback, I picked up Indemn Niffy (who I must say is very good at making me forget that I lost sixty dollars playing blackjack).  Niffy is pronounced with a long E sound, so it would rhyme with tree or the THREE in threesome.

At first there were some territorial issues, and they had to sniff each other's balls for a while, but within half an hour they were running around the house, knocking over stemware and having "cat riding" races.  Anyway it's all fast friends and mayhem around here, so hopefully I'll stop being inspired to write stories about lonely Eastern dragons who end up killing the human writers they live with in horrifically gruesome ways.

Cause that shit gets old.

They were just playing a second ago.
Something called "Rub my orb."
Obviously this month was a little on the outrageous side, numbers wise, and everything is basically going to be about the "Creepy Guy Narrative" article.  It kind of exploded everything...as you can see.

The monthly view.  As you can see, even "calmed down," things may never be the same.

And here we have the all time view graph...or as I refer to it, the
Look-Close-And-You-Will-See-A-Phallic-Symbol graph.
Everything I have ever done for the past year and a half
are represented by those tiny little foothills to the left.
Don't see it?  Look real close...

Not only did it get a quarter of a million page views, but the traffic brought thousands of readers to other articles.  The Prometheus review got about 3,500 page views this month--nearly quintupling it's performance so far.

But even though those articles have done well, the articles I wrote this month that will go into the "Best Of" Page are obviously "Creepy Guy" along with some of it's follow up articles, and the mailbox in which I reply to it (which I will probably finish up tomorrow and Saturday).  Plus the Pacific Rim write up did pretty well.  Amy's guest blog Mailbox about writing daily also did very well as it was linked by Writer's Write--a South African writing school that has a well-established audience on social media--mostly because of one of the images I used, but traffic is traffic.

I know it's going to be a long time before I have a month like this one again, but at least I have a sense of where Writing About Writing can go if I keep working hard.  For three days, I actually made enough each day to consider it a "real" job.

Three glorious days!!!  Of course, now I'm back to about $3/day for 5-8 hours of work, but...you know...baby steps.

Coming Next Month...

I have a few weeks before fall semester starts, so I'm going to focus on getting some good quality writing going on while I can give it a little more of my time and effort.  This weekend I plan to lock my door and put up the next part of A Demon's Rubicon if it kills me.  You should also expect another craft essay--probably the first of several on characterization.  I'm going to finish this series where I reply to comments on "Creepy Guy" and get on to some of the other cool questions people have been sending me.  The next update of the glossary is long overdue, and I'm going to get it going.  Plus an essay straddling process and craft about theme.  Our guest bloggers have been informed by Cedric that they are on notice and have to start guest blogging again, so some of their articles should show up soon.  Plus, The SciGuy says he has defeated several attempts to hack into the mainframe and piggy back another bad advice article into the W.A.W. feed--each attempt more pernicious than the one before.  He says that internet security is a bit like real security.  You can take precautions and make yourself tough to crack, but if someone is determined to get in, they eventually will.  So that doesn't bode well...

All that, a major image potpourri, and more are due to land this month.  So stay bookmarked!

7 comments:

  1. I must say I am enjoying your blog immensely. I came here from the "viral link", but I'm here to stay. Your experience inspired me to write my own viral-intentioned article on my blog "Geek Ramblings" entitled "The day I met Linus Torvalds", but alas it has so far failed to gain any traction above the very low triple figures. (sigh).

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    1. Did you already have a blog audience? Triple digits is nothing to sneeze at for a first effort. There are some posts in my first month that are four and five hits.

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    2. I had another blog in a previous lifetime. I think about 20-30 responded to my new blog (running for 6 months now). Most pages bet between 30 & 50 hits. My largest so far is just under 200 hits.

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    3. That sounds about right for six months. I think I was pretty happy to hit triple digits in a day at my six month mark.

      May I suggest Stumbleupon. You're not technically supposed to like your own stuff, but they won't stop you unless you do it too many times in a single day, and you can control how something gets tagged if you like it yourself. It's a great way to get your stuff to people who have listed your subjects as an interest.

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  2. Of course, now I'm back to about $3/day for 5-8 hours of work

    Well it used to be $2, right? So, like, you got a FIFTY PERCENT RAISE! Put that on your resume ;)

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    1. Also, now your blog is taunting me with ads for betabrand. I am trying really hard to resist buying more of their amazing bike-to-work pants, but google knows what I want. It knows.

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    2. That's actually true. There has been a slight overall raise. I'm not sure if it will die down further, but if it doesn't, it's kind of awesome.

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