10 Hits and Misses for 2017

Since I started this blog six-and-a-half years ago, I’ve had over 2.1 million visitors, 3300 on my busiest day, with over 23,000 comments on the 1,509 articles I’ve posted about writing. I have several columns:

• writer’s tips (sign up by clicking here)
• book reviews (usually Fridays)
• tech tips for writers (occasional)

In between, I write what’s on my mind, but always about the art of writing.

If I didn’t look at the statistics on my blog, I would guess that the most read posts were about how to market what you write, but not true. Last year, the series I wrote on Genre Writing Tips was so wildly popular I used that theme for my A to Z Challenge–and will again this year (there are a ton of genres). Then there is a series I call Descriptors–sixty-nine collections on how to describe a variety of stuff you include in your stories.

What a surprise to find out what you-all actually are reading. I am thankful for the WordPress statistics section. Here they are–my top 10 and bottom 10 of 2017:

Top Ten Hits

1. 51 Great Similes to Spark Imagination
2. 65 Ways to Describe Sight and Eyes in Your Writing
3. 24 Ways to Describe Pain
4. How to Describe Nature
5. 72 Ways to Describe Sound
6. How to Describe a Landscape
7. How to Show (Not Tell) Emotion–E to O
8. 35 Weird Traits Your Characters May Have
9. 178 Ways to Describe Women’s Clothing
10. How to Describe a Fight

If I remove the description articles, here are the remaining top ten:

1. 103 Most Beautiful Words? You Decide
2. 70 Collections to Infuse Your Writing
3. Word Count by Genre
4. 100+ Traits Your Character May Possess
5. 6 Tips for Western Fiction Writers
6. How to Write
7. 15 Tips for Writing Poetry
8. 13 Tips for Cozy Mystery Writers
9. 21 Tips from Strunk and White’s “Elements of Style”
10. 7 Tips for Literary Fiction Writers

Here are the ten that received the least amount of activity, but were no-less carefully-written:

Top Ten Misses

1. 103 Most Beautiful Words? You Decide
2. 19 Tips for Children’s Writers
3. Book Review: Smashed
4. Book Review: The Killing Lessons
5. Writers Tips #84: 20 Hints that Mark the Novice Writer
6. 10 Tips Guaranteed to Rescue Your Story
7. How Many POVs is Too Many?
8. 4 Ways to Plan Your Writing
9. Funny One Liners I’ve Read in Books
10. 19 Self-editing Tips

What were your most popular posts on your writer blog? Give me some topic hints for this year:

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Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy, the Rowe-Delamagente thrillers, and the upcoming Born in a Treacherous Time. She is also the author/editor of over a hundred books on integrating tech into education, adjunct professor of technology in education, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer,  a columnist for TeachHUB, monthly contributor to Today’s Author and a freelance journalist on tech ed topics. You can find her books at her publisher’s website, Structured Learning.