Searchwarp, Bridget Jones, Marc D’Arcy, Google, Paris Hilton and I

A week ago I had one of those days when nothing was working. Neither singing nor blogging. Nada. I woke up to the thought Gaaahhhh! what if I never break through? Time is marching, what if there isn’t enough left? Panic. Dooom.

Then I remembered. “Hang on, I’ve at least completed a script and I got it to Robert de Niro. Granted it could be in his toilet, which is where A-list directors keep all their v. important scripts. Perhaps I could send him a reminder to take a dump more often. Oh that’s disgusting.” What else did I have? A visible blog which Oprah or any publisher or film producer could see any day. And all sorts of other writing projects. If only I could get to them. Not enough time, oh, panic, doom. “Think of something else, quick.” I commanded myself. “ Singing!”

“The flipping singing. is. not. flowing.” I reminded my commanding self with gritted teeth.

“Well, it’s probably not meant to be, so stop feeling sorry for yourself and just focus on your writing.”

“No, I don’t want to, I want both” I muttered petulantly, sulking, thoroughly bothered, a bit flushed - probably menopausally.

“Well, you’ll never get anywhere really with either one unless you focus.”

“Mind your own business. I’m a woman, I can multi-task.”

Probably, I thought, the problem is just gritted teeth. Need to ungrit them. Can’t sing with a clenched jaw. However, trying to figure out how to unclench jaw only caused another temperature hike. “Possibly needed to focus just for the day on something positive.” I said, trying out a happy smile. “Like the red rating stars on my blog, they look v. smart.”

Then I remembered, that’s right, I'm the only one rating my blog at the moment. “Oh lawd”, I worried, getting more hot and bothered, “am becoming self-congratulatory like Paris Hilton. Hope Google doesn’t punish me. Sometimes they do, I’ve heard. Have to remember Google isn’t God. Better be careful of Paris Hilton suing me, though.“

Sigh. It seemed that no matter what I turned my mind to, nothing was going to give me cause to be positive. I poured myself some coffee and routed about for new subject matter – well what about Searchwarp? Huh, huh, what about that? With Searchwarp, I’m in heaven. My experience is a bit like Mark D’Arcy telling Bridget Jones he loved her just the way she was.

Whew! What a relief. I finally found something to settle my disgruntled mind on. I settled my butt in a comfy chair, stirred my coffee and looked back to when I started my blog 11 months ago, a complete and utter technophobe and ignoramus. I remembered when I first realized somebody was reading my blog. Gaaah, scary. Whoo, the pressure of fame.

I thought people found you by some kind of magical and utterly layman-impenetrable process. Well, as it happened, they did, and traffic increased, but by dribbles. Mind you, back then dribbles had me dancing in the street. Then I learned about article directories and, by chance? – surely not – discovered my heaven that is Searchwarp. The rest, as they say, is history. I was embraced into a community where I felt at home, amongst people whose own writing inspired, entertained and provoked thought.

The icing on the cake was that writing for Searchwarp sent traffic to my blog, and put me at the top of the Google search results for its title Stepping out of history. Suddenly my traffic shot up by leaps and bounds. It had been under 40 a month for 5 months, and then boom, it went to 553, whoo boy!

I sat drinking my coffee, ruminating happily. Last month my blog traffic was 751, and I’d had 2784 page views over the year.

“Nothing to set the Thames on fire” a mean spiteful voice whispered in my ear, but I shot back with “not too bad for a techno multifaceted-phobe either”.

“Yeah, well, you’ve only had 187 comments, and you’ve written 317 posts. Hard work. That’s what it is. Hard writing every day, hard hard hard. And for what? Nobody really gives a damn. It’s just a big vacuum out there.”

“Well I’m not giving my blog up, because it’s mine sweet mine and I love a challenge.”

“No you don’t. You just like it when it’s conquered and down on the ground v. dead and you stand with one foot on its belly, your sword raised triumphantly in the air.”

Gulp. Spirits sinking I peered into my coffee cup for succor. Empty. Glooom. Doooom. Panic and hot flush hovered again. “You big bully” I muttered to my internal critic, to not much avail. I got up and paced around the room. “Think! Think! There’s got to be something good in this!”

Aha! On Searchwarp, in 6 months I’ve had 26,103 page views of 72 articles, 755 very bloody nice comments and generally fantastic ratings. Every time I’m on the first or 2^nd page, 35,000 readers can see me PER DAY. And yes, I thought, it was the right moment to shout.

Internal skank bully slunk away, beaten. I poured another cup of lovely coffee, decaf this time, and settled down into my comfy chair again, happy as a king, thinking about how many friends I’ve made on Searchwarp, how much fun it is there with all the community stuff, what it’s done for my blog, and how my desire to write has gone viral since I joined because of all the back-up and support. And it’s been as easy as pie. I just showed up at the door.

My final thought as I drank the last few drops of my coffee, and got up to put all of this down on paper? SearchWarp is top notch in every way.