WordPress is a Mystery

How popular is WordPress as a blog, anyhow?

According to this source, WordPress.com users published over 52.3 million blog posts and more than 4.9 million web pages in January 2024. That’s nearly 2 million a day.

I didn’t realize that WordPress was so big. How does anyone get their posts seen? How do people occasionally find my page? I guess it’s all about hashtags, but I don’t know that my hashtags are all that special; yet I sometimes have those moments where sixty-something people find me. Even yesterday, 15 people found an older post of mine. How did that happen?

I suspect to really be seen, I would have to spend money on their SEO tools and advertising. I don’t have the budget for that, especially for the fact that this is not where I advertise books (at least not very often). I’d have to be a lot more serious and intentional for this blog to be something I promote. I guess WordPress’s workings will just have to be a mystery to me.

Hostinger Tutorials. (2024). Top 23 WordPress Statistics: Defining Trends and Insights for 2024. Available: https://www.hostinger.com/tutorials/wordpress-statistics?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwl6-3BhBWEiwApN6_kgCefZ7YZq2h_l318pel9KTNgBKulOMO8vnDd-9-fbWuZwLA7sNG_hoCPdYQAvD_BwE [September 19, 2024].

Book Promotion Time

I haven’t promoted my works lately. I’ve read somewhere (I don’t remember where) that I should be promoting my work 1/3 of the time, but that would be twice a week and I think that might be a bit excessive. On the other hand, I hardly ever promote my work.

The first book I want to promote is Kringle Through the Snow, which will be coming out on Kindle October 1st. It’s a Christmas romance in the Kringle Chronicles series. Self-professed nerd Wade Nelson meets high-energy event planner Sierra DuBois, and they struggle through Sierra’s abrupt goodbye. It will take soul-searching and a bit of Santa magic for them to find their happiness together.

The second book I want to promote will be arriving January 1, 2025 on Kindle, the third in the Hidden in Plain Sight series. In Reclaiming the Balance, sculptor Janice Wilkens escapes her abusive boyfriend to alarming news at the ecocollective Barn Swallows’ Dance. There, she meets the androgynous half-human Amarel Stein, who helps her accept that her son is likewise non-human. Janice’s ex wants her back to father more soldiers on, and Amarel and Janice must fight back and rescue Janice’s son from his captivity. Amarel and Janice will have to reconcile their differences to find the way to each other.

There are other books. I have written five other Kringle Chronicles books and two other Hidden in Plain Sight books. There are more on the way. You can find them all at Lauren Leach-Steffens’ Amazon page.

Readers

Yesterday was my best day ever as far as engagement on WordPress goes — 65 hits and at least 24 (hard to count them) likes. I think I have figured out how that happens one day, and the next there’s hardly any hits. It all has to do with whether your post makes the front page. And by some strangeness, I think three of my posts found their way to the front page yesterday.

Photo of woman sits on the wooden bench and working on laptop computer outside

There are so many of us on WordPress, all wanting hits. There are only so many of us who can spend time on the front page. What is the algorithm and how can we take advantage of it? I honestly don’t know, or else I would. I would love to have a lot of readers.

I have about 100 followers, but they’re not regular readers. I think I have about 10 regular readers. What would I do with 100 regular readers? With 2000? I think I’d fall over, and then when I recovered, I think I’d occasionally promote my books.

Does anyone want to read my books? Here they are.

2001st Post!

This is my 2001st post! I missed post 2000 because I wrote in answer to one of WordPress’s prompts. But I’ve actually stuck to this for 2000 posts!

My first post was Calling All Creatives, and it had four views. I get a few more views now, but would still like more readership. My most popular post was an anniversary post which got 65 views. My 2000th post was on the prompt “My Most Valuable Lesson” today.

What have I learned from 2000 posts?

One doesn’t get to 2000 posts by deciding to get there; one keeps writing one at a time until it happens.
Posts are better with pictures.
Using the supplied prompts boosts number of readers, and some of them stay on as regular readers.
WordPress does a far better job of sorting out riff-raff than Blogger. I have no more links from webcam girls showing up in my feed.
I can’t predict which posts will become more popular.
Not every reader likes the post, but enough do.
2000 posts is a lot of posts.

Here’s to 2000 more posts!

No Motivation (again?)

I have written nothing substantial for almost three weeks. I am panicking.

Writing is my flow activity, yet I don’t feel like writing. I have no ideas possessing me; the item I was writing seems to have bogged down. I have briefly thought of putting the writing down, doubting my ability to write. Standing at a crossroads, I ponder the path I will take (and cringe at this sentence.)

I need to get motivated. I need something to write, something that captures my imagination, which seems to have gone on strike. Not necessarily to get another novel written; I have too many novels already. But just to write something.

I’ve gone through this before, haven’t I?

Working out a Rhythm

At the end of week 2 of classes, I am still trying to get a rhythm to my days so I can write.

Three out of four Monday afternoons I will have meetings. Fifty percent of Tuesday afternoons I will have meetings as well. Unless I start writing in the evenings, and I’m often too tired by then, I will not be writing on those days. That gives me late afternoons Wednesday-Friday most of the time.

I have a Saturday routine that’s working. That’s a start.

I’ll keep you posted. I miss my flow activity!

Role Frustration

I need to get back into the swing of writing now that the semester has settled in.I need to find something more compelling to write than the Kel and Brother Coyote sequel; it’s a lot of fun but it feels like I’m doing it just to fill time. I’m absolutely pantsing the story, ignoring the outline I made for it.

I feel like my professor role has usurped my writer role. I figure this will get better when I’m more acclimated to the current professing duties; it is, after all, only the second week of the semester.

I have weathered this before; I will again. The right book will find me. I will get into the swing of writing. I just have to keep telling myself this.

5000 Views on my Blog? 2000 Blog Posts? How Did I Do That?

Yesterday, WordPress announced to me that my blog has had over 5000 views. That seems like a really big number. Then again, I’m a little over a week away from my 2000th post. I don’t feel like I have written two thousand posts. (Note: I believe this number counts the blog posts I transferred over from Blogger when I first moved here.)

How did I do this? A little at a time, without thinking of the number at the end. I didn’t think “Oh, I only have 256 more posts to write before I hit 1000!” I just wrote daily, and they all added up. I think the same happens when I write a novel. I don’t set out to write 80,000 words. I write the story until I’m done, and then count the words.

I’m sure this is a metaphor for life. Don’t count the steps; just go where you need to and check your progress later. This contradicts everything I know about resource management, however. Numerical goals (like 2000 blog posts or 80,000 words or 10,000 steps) are easy to track, far better than “when it’s done”. The goal has to be set so that one can tell whether they’re on track or not. But they’re tedious.

When there’s a great distance to the goal, the numbers can be daunting. This is where time management advice for procrastinators comes into play: Break the task up into smaller chunks. So the 2000 blog posts can be 20 chunks of 100 posts. That’s more manageable. Or the 80,000 words can be several chapters of 3000 words (which is the length of a chapter in my writing).

So there’s my advice. Don’t let the big numbers scare you — focus on the little numbers. Keep repeating. And then, eventually, they add up to 80,000 or 5000 or 10,000.

NaNoWriMo and Generative AI

The controversy in the writing world currently is that the NaNoWriMo organization has issued a statement not only supporting use of generative AI in its events, but dismissing opposing viewpoints as ‘ableist’ and ‘classist’.

To understand the impact of this, let me start with NaNoWriMo. This organization sponsors a world-wide writing festival every November which encourages people to write a 50,000 word novel in one month. Admittedly, 50k is somewhat short for today’s expectations of a novel, but it’s 50k more than most people feel they can write. In 2020, 383,064 people participated in NaNoWriMo, the latest statistic available (Wikiwrimo, 2024). For full disclosure, I have participated in NaNoWriMo for several years.

The issue with generative AI is more complicated. Not all AI is generative AI; that is, not all AI is used to generate or create content. The fear of writers is that generative AI creates content, and it creates it from the materials it’s been trained on, which are existing works. This goes beyond analyzing patterns in grammar use and spelling (which I would argue are acceptable) into creative aspects. In other words, training generative AI is mass plagiarism of ideas without crediting sources. An entity like NaNoWriMo supporting mass plagiarism of ideas seems antithetical to its principles.

In addition, artists and writers fear being replaced by the much cheaper generative AI. The quality of generative AI is not as good as the actual creations of human beings; but if generative AI takes over in commercial outlets, the public will become inured to lower quality. The loss of revenue to real live writers will become the loss of creativity to the wider world.

To address NaNoWriMo’s charge that opposing their approval of generative AI is classist and ableist, it is classist and ableist to assume that people with disabilities or of underrepresented social classes would need to use generative AI to compete in the marketplace of ideas. I suspect that the issue here is a lack of distinction between AI used to proofread and suggest grammar (such as in ProWritingAid, one of their sponsors) and the AI that creates entire segments or whole stories. I see a big difference between supporting a tool for improving form and a system for writing content. If this is NaNoWriMo’s dilemma, then they need to do some soul-searching and make a clear ethical statement as to where the line gets drawn between composition tools and content creation.

This is where I am in my ethical processing of the issue, that use of AI for translation, proofreading, or grammar correction is not at the same level as AI to generate ideas and content. The former is predicated on objective rules; the other on skimming subjective creative works. My struggle to define what is permissable is the struggle of the entire society in dealing with AI.

Wikiwrimo (2024). NaNoWriMo statistics. Available: https://www.wikiwrimo.org/wiki/NaNoWriMo_statistics#cite_note-3 [September 3, 2024].

Publication Dates Announced

Both my books for publication are ready to be published. They’re sitting on KDP waiting only for their publication dates. I will release Kringle Through the Snow on October 1, just in time for falling into your Christmas romance TBR pile. Kringle Through the Snow involves an event planner with a secret dealbreaker, a self-professed nerd with a big dog, and a high-class gala with the Grinch. And, of course, snow.

Reclaiming the Balance, a Hidden in Plain Sight novel, will be published on January 1st. I use the New Year as publication dates for this series (even though I could release it today) because of some sort of superstition on my part. This novel concerns Janice, a sculptor who flees her immortal ex-boyfriend with the help of Amarel, an androgynous Nephilim. The two face prejudice from the open-minded people of Barn Swallows’ Dance as they attempt to liberate Janice’s Nephilim son from her ex.

The e-books are available for pre-order; not so much the paperbacks.