2010 in Review - 'Riting: Here and There...

Image via Wikipedia

(If you think you've read this post before, you may be right - it accidentally got published a couple of weeks ago, and got into the feed before I could pull it back to the correct date. Oops!)

Total posts in 2010: 305  - includes 11 guest posts, 10 progress updates during two 24-Hour Readathons, and 30 daily posts in November for NaBloPoMo
Most-viewed 2010 post: “My Festival of Books Report, 2010 edition", 4/27/2009
Most-viewed older post: “Vacation Books and Beach Reads”, 8/6/2009

I’m always curious to see which posts get the most reads during the course of the year - and then I try to figure out why they drew so many eyeballs. Sometimes I think I know, and sometimes I have no idea...but, of course, I’d like to think it’s because they’re particularly good. On that note, here are 2010’s most-viewed posts, and I’m pleased to see that some of them are among my personal favorite pieces of writing this year:

• “My Festival of Books Report, 2010 edition", 4/27/10: I know exactly why this one tops the list. I included a photo of a panel discussion I attended that included author Pamela Ribon, and she tweeted the link to her Twitter followers - thanks, Pamie!

• "Rumors of the death of blogging...", 8/19/10: Quotes from other blogs, links, and writing out my own thoughts on the topic at hand: this post incorporated just about all the elements I most enjoy about blogging, and generated enough discussion to suggest the form’s got plenty of life left in it!

• "Seeing through family eyes: an *Own Your Beauty* moment", 11/17/10: I don’t make much ad money as a member of the BlogHer Publishing Network (BPN), but I do get readers via its circulation of posts from its members. Since this post was in response to a prompt in BlogHer’s year-long “Own Your Beauty” campaign, I guess it makes sense they’d choose it for the rotation.

• "(Banned) Book Talk: *Forever*, by Judy Blume", 10/7/10: I think this post was picked up for BPN circulation as well; it’s definitely my most-read book review this year.

• "Ten on Tuesday: The Embarrassing Music Edition", 1/19/10: This post gets a surprising amount of search traffic, and I had a lot of fun writing it!

• "There goes my girl: Gypsy, 1997(?) - 2010" 2/1/10: If you usually read posts here via a feed reader and don’t visit the blog, you may not be aware that this post is linked to a picture of my still-missed four-legged friend at the top of my left sidebar, but I think some people must have discovered that.

• “Sunday Salon: A twist on book clubs that I don't really buy into", 10/31/10

• "Armchair BEA: Book bloggers and publishers - evolving expectations", 5/27/10: This includes a few points I wasn’t coherent enough to mention during my BlogHer’10 panel session.

• "Armchair BEA's BBC Roundtable: Writing what you want to read, in your own voice", 5/28/10: I wasn’t at the 2010 Book Blogger Convention - an oversight that will be corrected in 2011! - but had some thoughts related to their panel on “Writing and Building Content” anyway.

Some of the writing on the blog this year wasn’t mine - I featured two weeks of guest posts in June. Two of those posts were also among 2010’s most-viewed, so I wanted to give them special mention: "Fact in Fiction", by Kim from Sophisticated Dorkiness, and "Clearing Out the Blog Closet," by Molly of The Bumbles Blog (which introduced me - and maybe you, too - to Feedly).


I continued to participate in the Weekend Assignment writing memes this year, but not as regularly as I have in the past; I joined in when I felt like I had a particular angle on the topic of the week, but skipped it when I didn’t. I recapped my family’s vacation trip to Washington DC and New York City this past summer - but since those posts were done left-handed, shortly after my first shoulder dislocation, they were a little lighter on words and heavier on pictures than usual - and reported on BlogHer’10, which brought me back to NYC in August 2010. And because sometimes my thoughts related to a book spill beyond the structure of a traditional review, I introduced the intermittent feature Thoughts From My Reading. One of those “Thought” pieces, slightly revised, became my first syndicated article on BlogHer.com (and yes, “syndicated” means “paid!”).


BlogHer.com is one of the other places I wrote this year, and I intend to keep that up in 2011; most of what I post there originally appears here, but may be tweaked just a bit...and I’m still hoping for a second syndicated post! BlogHer - the conference this time, not the site - also introduced me to Kamy Wicoff of She Writes (moderator of my panel session) and led to a fun assignment there, reporting on Book Blogger Appreciation Week for the SW community. Aside from those sites, I’ve cut back on “outside” writing; the Los Angeles Moms Blog (part of the Silicon Valley Moms Group) closed down in July, and I recently withdrew after several months as a contributor to TheSmartly due to a growing list of book-blogger commitments (and upcoming shoulder surgery). I’m comfortable with that - right now, my feeling is that if I’m not going to get paid for my writing, I really want it to come from, and contribute to, a labor of love. 


And for the record, I still love writing here. Even if I branch off to other places, this is my online home. My fourth blogiversary will arrive on March 16, and before 2011 is half over, there will be 1500 posts (!) on this blog! Thank you for reading at least some of them :-).