Happy Anniversary To Me!

I had a dream of starting a little blog a year ago in response to a challenge from Tara Lazar to write a post describing what last year's PiBoIdMo experience was like for me.  I barely even knew what a blog was and spent many a frustrating hour trying to create a blog platform for myself.  With a whole lot of luck and some help from my new friends in the writing community (thanks Beth Stilborn and Denise Mclennan Bruce), I managed to create my blog, ON THE WRITE TRACK, and posted my very first post.  You can read it by going here... http://donasdays.blogspot.com/2011/12/piboidmo-was-piece-of-cake.html

I had read somewhere the way to become known in the writing community is to blog often so I decided to create a goal for myself that I would post every single day for an entire year.  365 posts and I didn't even know what I was going to write about.  I felt in my heart that I had something to give back to a community of people who had welcomed me into their ranks and treated me like family.  So I wrote for them and for the other newbie writers like myself who were struggling to figure this whole "writing thing" out...;~)
 

Somehow along the way I found my voice and began getting new followers.  The first time I saw 5O little face icons peeking in on my blog I did a happy dance.  When those numbers bumped up to 100, I did another happy dance.  But when my numbers crept past 200 and kept going I teared up.  Why?  Because it amazed me people chose to stop by daily to read my posts and so I tried my hardest to infuse inspiration and motivation into every sentence I wrote.  A lot of readers (over 1300 of them) read a post I published in October entitled Helping Hands (
http://donasdays.blogspot.com/2012/10/helping-hands.html) and it aptly described how I envision my blog...as a source for others to feel a little bit better after having read one of my posts.  Now here it is, a year later, and I am absolutely blown away by the stats I just pulled for this post.  As of Monday, here are what my numbers look like:

Followers:  302 and growing

Published Comments: 4855

Posts: 332 with 307 published and 25 in drafts (I had to pull some of my published posts back into drafts because of possible future publication issues of my stories)

Visiting Countries: 24

Monthly Hits: 18,109

Total Pageviews: 149,692

I know my blog is a mere pebble in an ocean of blogs but to me, these numbers represent the acknowledgment of a year's worth of effort to inspire, entertain, and inform through my writing.  My readers feel like family and you are the measure of my worth as a writer.  In honor of my one year blog anniversary, I would like to say thanks for believing in me and this blog by giving away some prizes. 
 

If you feel like leaving a comment on this post, I will add your name to the hat for one lucky follower to win a children's book, or novel of your choice up to a retail value of $15 dollars.  Or if you prefer, you may choose from my vast resource library of writer reference books and we will figure out at a later date which one you would like to have.  

But if you get the urge to tell others about my WRITERLY WISDOM coming in January or encourage others to join my FLASH FICTION FRIDAY fun,  just let me know in the comments of this post, and your name will be added to the hat a second time!  The winning name will be announced Monday, December 17th and I will try my best to get the prize to you in time for Christmas!

For anyone else who wants to take advantage of my other anniversary prizes, I will do a general critique of any story you have up to 2000 words.  Depending on how many people might take me up on my offer, I will schedule a time that is convenient for both of us to make good on that promise.

There you have it.  I didn't quite reach my goal of posting every day this past year but that's okay.  I made new friends, added a credit to my "published" list and had the chance to learn from some of the world's best writing talent.  What more could I possibly wish for?