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Alisa's Blog
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The last time I blogged here, I was caught up in a siege of superstition. I was breaking wishbones, blowing on dandelions and generally doing everything in my power to make a wish come true. I was doing this mostly because I no longer had control. I'd done all I could to convince a publisher to buy my book.
I'd built a blog with a following. I'd gotten media exposure for it. I'd written and edited my proposal a million and one times.
In the end, I just had to trust that an editor would believe what I did: that people would buy my book.
I don't do this trusting thing very well. It's something I should probably work on. I went to a Buddhist meditation class and tried to release my attachment to the "book deal." That worked for about 24 hours.
For the most part, between the time I pressed send and the day of the book auction, I was a nervous wreck.
Thankfully, the book generated a lot of interest from various publishers. I went to New York for meetings, where I was told all sorts of wo [...] -
About a week ago, just before my literary agent started contacting publishers about my memoir, I played wishbone tug of war with my daughter. I'd had the wishbone on my desk for months, ever since STS member Deena Burgess gave it to me attached to a holiday card. I was saving it for this special occasion.
But I should have known, you know? It's one of the universal laws of life. Parents do not try to beat their children at ANYTHING, including wishbone tug of war.
I should have never ever in a million years considered breaking that wishbone with my 4 year old, especially considering that I wanted the wish so badly. All I can say is this: I was a little manic over the prospect of the book---the very book I've been writing and tinkering and editing and obsessing over for two years---finally going out to publishers. I wasn't thinking clearly. No, I was not.
I suppose you can guess what happened. My daughter ended up with the big end of the wishbone. I asked her if she would let Mommy ha [...] -
When I first starting blogging at STS, Angela challenged me to set a goal. I was new to this whole blogging thing. I was feeling really motivated and positive. The blogosphere was my chocolate, you know?
So I said, "My goal is to have 20,000 monthly blog visitors at Project Happily Ever After by January."
Angela emailed back, "Are you sure that's realistic?"
I said, "No, but anything less just wouldn't be interesting."
Well, as you all know, January came and went. I didn't reach my goal. I think I had somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 monthly uniques at that time. I was also burned out, mad at the world, and jealous of any blogger who had traffic that rightfully should have been mine.
Just being honest here. It wasn't a pretty situation, and I'm not at all proud of the person I was that month.
It seemed as if nothing was working out in my life. My husband's business was going through some major hard times. Our credit card bill always seemed to be higher than the money that was act [...] -
So you've been blogging for a while. You've been checking Google Analytics for a while. You've been submitting your stuff to social bookmarking sites like Stumble Upon and Reddit for a while.
And, for a while, your traffic has completely stagnated. If you've seen any Stumble Upon bump at all, it's in the neighborhood of 100 or 200 extra visitors, all of whom stayed on your site for all of 20 seconds.
And you keep hearing about these stinking bloggers who are getting thousands of Stumble Upon or Reddit hits. What are they doing right that you are doing wrong? Is it a matter of knowing the right people? Is it a matter of writing the right type of blog (tech stuff versus other stuff)? Is it yet another white male conspiracy designed to keep the rest of us from rising up and claiming what is rightfully ours on the Internet?
I'm pretty sure the answers to those questions are all, "No," with the exception of the White Male Conspiracy part. You know...um...I'm just going to say one thing [...] -
I'm scared of a lot of things, ranging from heights to piranhas, but one of the things that scares me the most is this: rejection.
And I've had plenty of it, so you'd think I'd be used to it by now. I've had my share of breakups. I've sent my share of essays off to magazines, only to get the "this is not right for our readers" response. And, of course, there was the David Sedaris brush off.
Yes, the very David who I love to read. Yes, the very David who I thought I knew, because, you know, I've read all of his books. That David. You see, in February I tried to get my memoir in front of him for a possible blurb. I sent it to his New York literary agent along with a shoehorn, because David had written in his most recent book that he'd always wanted a shoehorn. The one I sent was solid brass. It was an antique.
He should have loved me forever, don't you think?
He didn't. He didn't even get a chance to know about me or the shoehorn.
The entire package---shoehorn and all---came back two d [...] -
I don't know about you, but my inner critic is ruthless, and she starts tearing me down the moment I get out of bed and step on the scale. Just this morning, for instance, she sneered, "See? I told you! If you hadn't have eaten that chocolate mouse parfait last night, you'd be two pounds lighter this morning! You had to be such a pig, didn't you?"
I have a Positive Voice, too, and she tries to fight off Mrs. Negativity whenever possible, but she's not always quick on her feet. For instance, this morning, she groggily said, "But it tasted so good. And I deserved it. Didn't I?"
The inner critic pecks away at me all day long. As I parent, she says things like, "You're such a bad mom" and "if you were a good mom, you would..." As I write, she's right there, too, saying, "This is garbage. You've lost your touch. You're washed up. Face it: you should change careers."
Seriously. It's amazing I have the courage to face and live each and every day with a voice like that. But I do. I do becau [...] -
No one, to my knowledge, has established a support group for people like me, but someone should. You see, ever since the initial weeks of blogging, I've been a traffic addict.
It started with me begging my brother to activate Google Analytics on my blog. Because I did not initially have access to it, I called him daily to check my stats. I eventually annoyed him enough that he set it up for me on my computer so I could check on my own.
At first I checked just once a day. Then I discovered that I could change the settings and see how my traffic was doing in real time. That's when I started checking multiple times a day.
At my worst, I checked several times an hour. Seriously. Some people chain smoke. I chain screen refreshed.
Several symptoms should have tipped me off that I had a problem. They included:- I felt forlorn and empty whenever I was away from my computer. When I wasn't checking Analytics, I was thinking about checking it.
- When I checked and my traffic was up, [...]
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I come from a family of hard workers. On my Dad's side, there are the farmers who survived the dust bowl and the Great Depression. They rose every day at 5 a.m. and worked until dark. On my mom's side are the Russian and Polish immigrants who arrived in this country penniless and persecuted, using hard work, street smarts, and determination to open and run successful businesses in Brooklyn, the Bronx and elsewhere.
My heritage taught me this: The road to success is paved with hard work.
So, during the past 7 months, as I've attempted to launch a blog, I've allowed that to be my mantra. When my eyes burned at 11 p.m., as I stared at the computer screen and attempted to comment on yet another blog in order to drive traffic to my own, I told myself, "I knew this would be hard. It takes hard work to succeed."
When I rose at 3 a.m. or 5 a.m. to write a blog so I would have it out of the way in time to start my official workday (the one that I actually get paid for), I told mysef, "I knew [...]
