We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Blog Post

Apologies for the day-late post. I spent all goddamned day yesterday running around after Blog trying to get it off of rooftops or balconies or even those low brick walls that surround playgrounds in civic parks where it was singing the "cartoon-character-falls-in-love-with-another-cartoon-character" part of Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Overture.

Which is a bit weird seeing as it's an instrumental piece.

Normally Tuesdays are for guest blogging*, but we pause for a moment to bring you a couple of those amazing milestone moments and give them a wave as we pass by.

First of all, yesterday at about 11am, my Facebook page for Writing About Writing tipped over to half a million likes. Half. A. MILLION. Surely there are bigger pages out there (lots of them), but not a whole lot of them are author pages from anyone who isn't a household name.

Holy fricken balls!!!

"That's a Wheaton!" Blog squealed.

"That's not a Wheaton," I replied, shaking my head.

"Half a million. That's totally a Wheaton," Blog insisted.

"A Wheaton is Twitter followers," I said. "This is Facebook. It's totally different."

"It counts," Blog said. "I've got a Wheaton."

"We," I said.

"Huh?"

"WE have a Wheaton....even though that's not what we have."

"That's what I meant. Totes."

The other thing that happened, probably about four days ago based on my analytics, is that Blog quietly slid over the three million mark. Three fucking million people have clicked on my blog. I know not all of them read an article, but it's still amazing. Roughly the same number of people that fill the city I look across the bay at when I drive through Tilden Park to beat freeway traffic from Lafayette to Berkeley.

Blog: "Every single one of them has read me."
Me: "That's not....that's not how any of this works."
Blog: "Every. Single. One."

I can't thank all of you enough. I know readers come and go, and some have hipster glasses and like "my older stuff better," and others just rage click when they disagree with the title, but it's still an amazing couple of milestones to pass so early in the journey. At least one person has emailed me for the dozenth time to remind me that I still owe a conclusion to my Skyrim article and they refuse to read another word of anything else until I conclude that.

But it is still humbling and inspiring to remember that I started this blog only five years and change ago as a real-time, real-world example of how to (or at least one way to) launch a career in creative writing, and It. Is. Happening.

And it is happening because of all of you. Thank you all so much.


"Five million by the end of the year, right?" Blog asked after I had stopped the latest attempt to climb up onto a kid's slide to sing Tchaikovsky again.

"That's a LOT," I said. "Somehow I doubt it, but the way Facebook is growing, who knows. Some of those older posts are getting thousands off a rerun."

"That's the power of the Wheaton," Blog nodded.

"It's not a Wheaton," I said.

"Wheaton," Blog whispered.

"You know, whatever. Yes."

"You should promise some wild shit to generate buzz."

"How about I just write harder and better?"

"The Wheaton demands wild shit!"

"No I–"

"The power of Wheaton compels you."

"Shut up."

"WHEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAATOOOOOOOOOOON!"

So now, in honor of the post I once made in my second month when I had broken an all time record of twenty (that's right TWENTY!) pageviews, here is the same Hugh Grant dancing post. Along with my personal promise that I will (*gulp*) reproduce it (or a practical facsimile involving me dancing) if we hit 5 million before the end of 2017.

2 MILLION!! (Thank You)

I've got an awful lot of writing that is half formed, and less time to solidify it into actual posts while I'm visiting my mom, but I wanted to pause for a moment and thank everyone for getting me to the next major milestone.

I knew we'd hit two million this year, but honestly, I thought it would be March or April. I didn't think it would be within the first month, never mind the first week. The success of The Narrative of Normalization (already the number two article of all time) and the even stranger success of my FB page's comment policy (which is number three of all time) vaulted us over the two million mark as day seven was wrapping up. I mean I can't get 95% of my FB page to read ANYTHING that isn't a pun on a macro, but suddenly....bam.

Two million!  TWO MILLION!! That's the population of Houston (which, strangely enough, is close to where I am visiting my mom).

And as always, my thoughts turn to all of you. I literally couldn't do it without all of you. Thank you all so much for reading and helping this scrappy, two-bit blog start to scrape out a little dream shaped space in my world. And I will keep writing as hard as I can and try to get us even faster to three.

One....MILLION Pageviews!

Whoever that one person is, they are very, very fast.
That was just in the half second it took me to click
open my blog from the analytics page.

Hi there beloved readers, 

Today, at a little after eleven o'clock, Writing About Writing reached a million page views. 

That's more people than live in Austin, Texas or about as many as live in San Jose, California. It's almost as many as live in Dallas.

It has taken me nearly three years of writing to reach this point and very nearly 1000 posts (about 35 to go). Some posts went viral and got a quarter of a million page views. Others from the first days of the blog have languished and never even hit double digits. 

When I started blogging, I had a lot of false humility. "Oh, I'm sure it won't be that big," I said with a plastic smile. Secretly though, down in my heart, I believed that as soon as I hit the blogoverse, and people had a chance to discover I was there, my genius would attract people in droves. I honestly thought my first million was probably going to happen within the first year. 

As reality set in, it became pretty clear that a million page views would be on the "crackpipe dream pile" with groupie threesomes, "paying the bills with writing," and the hope that people would stop rolling their eyes when I said I was a blogger. After that, my far, far, FAR more realistic estimate was that I was probably looking at at least six or seven years before I reached a million hits–maybe even a little longer. In those first few months, pulling down 8, 10, 12, and even 4 thousand page views it never crossed my mind that I could get there in any fewer than five years. I would have thought that was being too optimistic.

Yet here we are at a little less than three. 

I love you all for appreciating my shtick.

As always, my thoughts turn to gratitude The reason I'm not an old man merely yelling at the clouds here is because of each of you. Many of you have not just stopped in to read an article or two, but have followed my page and visited regularly, and a few of you have even shared article, helping me to go far and wide.

Though the future of my writing is still a little hazy, it seems that the possibility of a career of non-traditional publishing is at least feasible, and this blog may be the centerpiece of an actual really, real career in writing for a living. However that shapes out exactly though, it was entirely because of all of you.

Thank you so much. You all leave me breathless.

One....MILLION page views.

Those Breathtaking Moments

I had a moment recently. The "Holy crap, I'm DOING it," moments where I suddenly realize that my dream of writing for a living is coming true.

I know we like the stories of Stephen King getting the phone call with the six figure book deal or the story of the unknown author whose first book gets optioned as a movie, but it is the quiet determination and the baby steps and usually the years of hard work that get anyone to those points. There's not one spectacular moment of success. Most of the stories are quiet and slow. "And then I was making a tiny bit of money--enough to go to a movie or buy a book. Then I was making a hundred a month or so and thinking of it as a small raise. Then a couple hundred a month. And then I didn't have to take a promotion that would involve staying late every night. And then I could afford to take some time off work. And then I was barely able to eke out my bills. And then...."

One of the reasons that I really like this blog is that it not only dispenses advice and wisdom but it dispenses a meta advice and wisdom as well by existing in real time. A reader showing up without context might think I was lucky or enviable to be making money through writing, but with the context provided, they can see:

1- It has taken three years of almost daily posts to get here. That's a lot of work.
2- It has only taken three years to get here. That's not an insurmountable barrier.

Some days though....it scares the hell out of me too. I feel like...well, I sort of felt like if you were pumping your legs on a bicycle flying machine, and you were losing altitude and losing altitude and you squeezed your eyes shut and pumped just as hard as you possibly could so that you wouldn't hit the ground as hard. Then, as you're there in the eye-shut zone pumping your legs and ignoring the hot burn of your muscles, you realized that you should have landed...minutes ago. And you don't stop pedaling but you risk opening your eyes for a moment.

And that's when you realize you're flying.

I work, as most of you know, one night a week at a community college teaching ESL and developmental English. Playing househusband to my family means I don't really have any bills, but I do some teaching so that I have spending money.

Every semester they ask us to fill out these little forms to tell our availability for the coming semester. I've had enough seniority for a while to just tell them what I want and I always get it.

I was filling out the form for Spring '15 when I realized I didn't need it. I make more money writing than I do from teaching. I don't make as much per hour, mind, it takes a whole week of writing to make about as much as I do in ten hours of teaching, (and I have to keep writing during all the school vacations to hit that average) but if I wanted to, I could drop the class.

A year ago, I dropped from teaching two classes a week to one because writing was covering that extra class's income. Now I could drop from one class to none and make about as much as did before.
I kept the class for Spring just because teaching gives me something to do each week that forces me to remember what day it is and put on pants (and if I use that money to write more, it will be better spent getting a professional cleaner in once a week or something), but just realizing that I didn't need to was breathtaking.

This is really happening. It's really, really happening*.

Talent: I haz it!

*Of course 90% of what I make from blogging is donations, not ad revenue, so this is really thanks to all of you.

The Remote Milestone

Before this blog, it never even occurred to me that a milestone
was once literally a stone to mark the miles.

I made myself a promise when I started this blog.

Well, I made myself two promises, but you probably aren't interested in the one about the brie cheese and the day old carp jerky.

It's been almost two years now, and way back in February of 2012, I made myself a promise that I wouldn't get "stuck" blogging.  I was going to give blogging a serious try and I wouldn't hold anything back in the attempt, but it wasn't going to be a thing I did endlessly with no progress. I wouldn't be one of those losers forever gnawing at the same bone and claiming that some day my ship would be coming in. (The writer versions of these types are particularly self-delusional and pathetic.)

No, I would have something to show for my efforts by February 2014--two years from my start date--or I would focus much much more writing attention on something else.  I'd probably still blog, but something more along the line of once every week or two.

I just didn't want to be one of those writers that kept spinning my wheels trying the same thing for decades. I see them submitting stories over and over to no avail or forever retooling their novels to submit yet again, and it breaks my heart. More than that, it makes me really wary of the fine line between not giving up and not knowing that it's time to give up. Writing is very much a world where tenacity merits out, but tenacity alone isn't enough. It must accompany some measure of skill and creativity.  It's really hard for a writer to know what the difference is between not trying hard enough and just totally sucking.

There is a point at which writers need to face that they must either do something drastic to get much better at their craft or decide that writing is just for their own personal enjoyment, but that they are never going to carve out a living.  I needed a point at which I evaluated whether to "stay the course" like all the follow-your-dreams cliches, or if I should "know when to say when" like all the know-your-limits cliches. The choosing of cliches upon which to live one's life is a serious matter.

I even set a goal, so that evaluation would be objective: $100 per month.  

Technically, I also threw in an "and/or one blistering groupie threesome per quarter" clause, which I figured was imminently reasonable since supportive girlfriend has already committed to being one third of such an event. You'd think being two thirds there would make the rest a cake walk, but it turns out that last third is the real doozy.

A hundred dollars a month is not enough to pay the bills. It's not enough to live on. It's not enough to justify the 30+ hour weeks of writing I do to get the blog content out to the world.  (For the hours I put in, it would be, in fact, less than a dollar an hour.)  But compared to the $.05 per week I was making back then, it would represent real, genuine progress. I thought it was a good amount. It seemed to me that it was a number that crossed the Rubicon between "hobby at which I happen to earn some money" and "(extremely) labor intensive side line job that no self respecting Malaysian sweat shop worker would accept."

Because that's totally where I want to be!

I watched that two-year mark getting closer and closer.  February 2014.  I even had an app counting down the days.  Slowly, inexorably, the it approached.  18 months. 1 year.  200 days. 16 weeks. A penny every few days became one a day.  A penny a day became a few cents a day. A few cents a day became ten or fifteen but with the occasional day of a dollar or two. A high school friend (whose inspiration is matched only by her generosity) began to earmark ten dollars a month for Writing About Writing. A few dollars here. A couple more there. I always felt tremendously grateful, but it simply wasn't getting anywhere close to $100.

Now here we are three months from the date, and I can already tell you that it's not going to matter...

The world of snarky writing advice sheds a single tear....

Because I've hit that number three months running!! And I've hit it five months out of the last seven. And unless something goes very wrong, I'm going to keep on hitting it.

It's always from different combinations of revenue streams.  Sometimes it's a birthday present donation. Sometimes it's a bunch of little donations that manage to add up. Once it was a reader and friend--who hates paypal--pressing a twenty dollar bill into my hand at a social function over my objections.  Most of the time it is more miracle than anything--a reaction to one particular article, a fluke day of four small donations, or an 11th hour ad click that tips me over the edge.  Often it has a lot to do with The Patron/Muses and their awesome awesomeness. (And I will be adding a new one soon to that list.) But somehow it just keeps happening. Some synthesis of events ends up stumbling over the milestone. And while $100/month is not even starving Bohemian money, it's progress enough to stay the course.

So despite some of the best attempts of "Anonymous" to make me cry, I'll be sticking around. Oh there will be new goals--new points in the future where I will have to admit that I'm never going to save up for retirement on a few hundred dollars a month or that hookers and blow require more than a four figure salary.  And perhaps my pen is destined to be hung up one day. But for the time being, it seems you're stuck with me.

Thank you all so much for reading, and for many of you who have taken a chance on me by donating your hard earned money. I can't tell you enough how much you inspire me.

Trophy Case

Think.....gaudier.

Whether I hit 1000 page views or 150,000, I usually took the time to crow about it.  But rather than let all those posts float away into the cyberether, I'm going to put them in a gaudy display case down in the  Writing About Writing's basement.

Thank You--Yes YOU!!  (1000 Page Views)
Now that you've hit 1337 page views, what are you going to do?
25,000 Page views.  Thank you.  Yes YOU!
50,000 Thank you!!!
75,000 Our Purple Suited Book Pimp will have to wait.
One Year Old
Wetting Myself Over 100,000 Page Views. 
A Strange Sort of Milestone.  Thank you for helping me get here.  (124,000 Page Views)
150,000 Thank you!
Milestones & 400,000
Half A Million (500,000)
A Remote Milestone
Two Years Old
3/4 of a Million (750,000)
$2,500
Those Breathtaking Moments
One Million!
Three Million (And 500k likes on FB too!)