Happy Blogiversary Writers’ Rumpus!

Writers’ Rumpus launched one year ago today[1] with our first post, making today our one-year Blogiversary.[2] Thanks for being with us on our writing and illustrating journey!

The first year is bound to be full of milestones, and ours surely has been. Here are a few statistics about our blogging journey so far.

Over the past year:

• Readers in 111 different countries …
• viewed 99 blog posts …
• by 13 Rumpus Writers (members of the critique group)…
• and 5 guests …
• a total of 23,126 times,[3] …
• and left 1,148 comments.  ^[4]
• Of those readers, 891 are followers who subscribe to the blog through WordPress, email, Twitter, Facebook, or Tumblr.

Next, here are a few milestones from our personal writing and illustrating journeys.

Over the past year:

• 30 group members (writers and illustrators) completed a total of 750 critiques of each others’ work.[5]
• 4 writers (Paul, Alison, Kirsti, and Joyce) published 5 books and 2 novel excerpts.
• 3 writers (Jen, Paul, and Carol) have 6 more books that will publish over the next twelve months.
• 1 writer (Marianne) signed with an amazing agent.

Now back to the blog. When we first started, one main goal was “to have a place to share news of note, both among our members and with the wider community of everyone who’s interested in children’s publishing.” Honestly, I imagined that our news of note would mainly be of interest to our group members. I had no idea how wide that wider community would be. But then this happened:

Seasoned bloggers might not be surprised, but I was new to blogging. I had no idea that our blog might go international! Thanks to blogging, I’ve met writers online from all over the United States and all over the world.[6] I’m honored and a little humbled that so many people from so many places have found our blog worth visiting.

And we’d like to KEEP our blog worth visiting. So here are a few questions for you, dear readers from near and far: What topics would you like to see us blog about in the coming year? Do you have a favorite post from the past year? A favorite topic you like to read about? Let us know in the comments section, and thanks for reading Writers’ Rumpus![7]

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[1] Well okay, technically it’s tomorrow, June 11. But we post Tuesday and Friday, and today’s Tuesday.

[2] The word nerd in me wonders if it should instead be called an anniblogary, because anni is the Latin root for year. So anniblogary means year blog. But that neglects the Latin root verse which is for vertere, meaning to turn. So blogiversary would be blog turn—which honors a change of some kind but doesn’t specify what. Either way we’ve lost a Latin root from anniversary. But hey, everybody know what a bus is even though the word is nothing but a little Latin ending lopped off the full word omnibus. Which only goes to show that language is always evolving, and as long as people know what you’re talking about, it’s fine. So, raise a glass (of milk—we write for kids) for linguistic evolution, and Happy Blogiversary.

[3] I’m not sure whether all of those views and visits were real people. Akismet, the spam filter WordPress offers its users, also caught 76,899 spam comments, and I don’t know enough about Akismet to say whether visits by spambots count as blog views.

[4] Some of the “spam” comments may have been real comments. If your comment was one of them, please accept our apologies for deleting it, and please do keep reading and commenting. Unless you really are a spambot. In which case, please don’t. Other kinds of bots are welcome to comment. We have nothing against artificial intelligence, per se.

[5] We don’t keep stats on how many words we write or sketches we draw, but I’m sure the numbers are astronomically impressive.

[6] I have a sneaking suspicion that if WordPress tracked views from Antarctica, then we’d have views from there, too. (How about it, WordPress? If Pottermore can keep tabs on Antarctica, you can too.)

[7] You read all the footnotes? Really? Wow, thank you! Thank you! Now please remember to leave your thoughts about future blog posts in the comments section. Thanks!