Category: Meta-whatever
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Wow, it’s really possible for a random tweet by a random person to go viral
Was just on Twitter for a sec and saw a mildly amusing tweet and retweeted it. And then I clicked on it and was like, “Whoah, 2.2k people have retweeted this? Who the heck wrote this?” Then I clicked on that guy’s profile and saw that he only has about 450 followers. And he’s just…
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Changed my blog’s theme
If I was doing this blog again, I probably wouldn’t do it on WordPress.com. I’d probably go ahead and use one of these much more flexible tools (that I only learned about last night) like Squarespace or Strikingly. However, as it currently stands I have about 500 readers who’re subscribed to my blog through WordPress’…
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This is a test masquerading as a substantive post
For years I’ve been trying to figure out how to properly link my wordpress and twitter and tumblr and facebook accounts, and nothing has ever seemed quite right. But I was just talking on the phone with a friend, and he told me about this online service called IFTTT (If this, then that) which basically…
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I get stressed about the self-promotion thing
From what I can see, young adult writers tend to be extremely canny and energetic self-promoters–much more so than SF writers. There’s so much that goes on behind the scenes: so much activity on the web and on social media and in terms of library visits and conferences and blog tours and book tours and…
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How to increase your blog traffic
This month (January) has been my highest-ever month in terms of traffic! Since August, I’ve been hovering at around 2.2-2.7k visitors per month. But this month, I’ve had 5,063 (and that number is still increasing!) Even before I wrote this post, this month was shaping up to be my best. But after that, traffic really…
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[Wrap-up 2013] This year, Blotter Paper got 2.5x as many pageviews, visitors as it did in 2012
Unfortunately, Google Analytics was breaking the blog, so my statistics on this aren’t as good as I’d want them to be. Anyway, my impression was that the Blotter Paper’s growth wasn’t nearly as aggressive in 2013 as it was in previous years. But upon viewing the final stats, I see that I was wrong.…
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My goal is to write the book that your kid has to read in 8th grade English
Everyone wants to become a better writer. But it’s a little gauche to say that you want to become a great writer. It’s an admission that puts too much on the record. Becoming a better writer is a task at which it’s almost impossible to fail. Becoming a great writer is a task at which…
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Getting way too much comment spam, so I made a few changes
From now on, comments will be closed on article older than 14 days and all comments by people who’ve never commented before will be held for moderation. It’s weird, for five years WordPress’ comment system flagged almost all the spam that I got. Maybe one or two spam comments slipped through every month. But now…
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Recent appearances by ME elsewhere on the internet
My MFA application story, “A House, Drifting Sideways” was just published by GigaNotoSaurus. So if you’ve ever wondered what it takes to get into Hopkins and NC State, just drift over there and see for yourself. Actually, you can’t see–you’ll never see–because what was published was a significantly revised version of what I sent in…
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Let me know if you have trouble accessing my site
I might have fixed it, but I also might not have fixed it.