Purely out of sheer amusement, I decided to compile the Top 20 posts of the year here at jolly ol’ terribleminds. Now, to be clear, between my three sources of reporting (WP_Stats, Google Analytics, CyStats), I get pretty wildly different numbers as to hits and views and what-not, but overall they seem to agree that these are the most viewed over the course of the last 365 days.
Please to enjoy.
Or, y’know, don’t.
Thpth.
2: Want To Be A Freelancer? Just Punch Yourself In The Face, Instead
3: NaNoWhoNow? NaNoWriMo Dos and Don’ts
4: The Writer’s Prayer (The Penmonkey Paean)
5: Avatar Porn Will Destroy Us All
7: Why You Should Freelance (Despite All That Face-Punching Business)
9: Oh To Hell With It, Let’s Talk About Piracy
10: Should I Self-Publish? A Motherfucking Checklist
11: The Truth About Turtle Penis
12: Murdering Unicorns: Ending The Myths That Poison A Writer’s Life
13: Why You Won’t Finish That Novel
14: A Gentleman’s Guide To Proper Beard Maintenance
15: I Must Renew My Contract With Dread Mistress Pauley Perrette
16: Why You Probably Still Suck As A Writer
17: Breaking The Lemniscate: The Ending Of Inception
18: Fuck It, It’s Time To Talk About My Beard
19: My Beard Come So Fat, I Wanna Do Laser
20: “A Radioactive Monkey”
And there you have it.
I am, of course, interested: did you have a favorite post of the year?
It’s okay if you didn’t.
I mean, sure, it’ll be another tear-stained pillow night for me. But you’re used to that.
Austin Wulf says:
Beware of Writer is definitely the one that hooked me to terribleminds. And Radioactive Monkey reinspired me to write short fiction.
Come to think of it, I might be a big part in Beware of Writer’s huge view count, between passing it around and viewing it so often myself. But I’m crazy enough to think things like that.
In other news: Happy New Year from the Rocky Mountains.
January 1, 2011 — 2:34 AM
Catana says:
Thanks for ruining my day. I’m supposed to be writing, not reading.
January 1, 2011 — 10:50 AM
terribleminds says:
@Austin:
Beware of Writer really went apeshit. It’s well over 100k looky-loos by this point, and I continue to see it RT’ed — which is kind of nuts to me.
You never really know when a post is going to take off.
— c.
January 1, 2011 — 11:55 AM
Sarah W says:
Murdering Unicorns was the first post I read here and it’s still a favorite, but I think it was the Writer’s Prayer that transformed me into one of your dedicated stalk–ah, followers.
January 1, 2011 — 5:41 PM
Shullamuth says:
“Beware of Writer” my first; “Murdering Unicorns” my favorite.
January 1, 2011 — 5:43 PM
Shelley says:
“Beware of Writer” reached into orbit in the empyrean. Really good stuff that.
January 3, 2011 — 2:49 PM
Shelley says:
Hey. Just read your piracy post for the first time. Missed it last year. This is off topic for this post, I’m chiming in a year late here.
I see you’ve discussed at length the issues of the “democratization of information” and getting “stuff” for free or conveniently on the Internet – this is what I was trying to pin-point last week about ePublishing your work. All I can say is (since you and your readers clearly know the issues very thoroughly) that I am teaching my students the meaning and value of intellectual property and encourage them to think before they download without paying. Hopefully they will grow up with the power to spend with integrity.
For me, I look at intellectual property as different from “information” on the Internet. 99% of the time, I pay for the movies, music, books I like. The other 1% are YouTube videos I download to show at school because YouTube is blocked. I’ve never pirated a book or song for free; I have shared those I’ve purchased though. Funny, I’ve put fiction in one category and non-fiction in another I guess. I don’t want to pay for non-fiction information.
Price is a determiner of whether I’ll buy, but would not affect my decision against pirating someone’s creative work. No way.
January 3, 2011 — 4:20 PM