Saturday, March 08, 2008

Blog Birthday

It's exactly a year since I took my first fear-filled step towards sharing my writing and I started this blog. Here is my first post (under the pen name of Hellojed). At the time I had written roughly 20% of the first draft of my first novel.

Since then I've:
Discovered other bloggers and writers who were always willing to share their hard-earned experiences with others.
Nervously left comments on blogs and was amazed and touched when they visited my blog and took the time to comment on my posts.
Found new friends that applauded my milestones and got me through my wobbles.
Subscribed to and enjoyed 61 blogs, first with Bloglines, then NewsGator, RSS Bandit and now Windows Live Mail.
Discovered Feedburner and developed an obsession with checking my subscriber and visitor count constantly.
Discovered Technorati and developed an obsession with checking my authority and rank, ended up removing their widget from my blog.
Did some Blogger hacking.
Finished the first draft of my novel.
Retrained and got my first temp job as a legal secretary. (Learning to touch type has definitely helped with my writing too.)
Joined NaBloPoMo.
Subsequently gave up blogging for a month due to overkill.
Came back and outed myself.
Finished work and started on the second draft of my novel.

Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read my blog, subscribe to it and left a comment over the last year. As soon as I started blogging my daily word count shot up as a result of your support. To everyone who has a blog: keep sharing. To everyone who doesn't: get one!

And finally, here are five posts that I really enjoyed writing:

Character Research
Dangers of Drink
Good Friday Prohibition
Quality vs Quantity
and a recent one: Dear Muse

20 comments:

CL Taylor said...

Happy Birthday Yvonne's blog :o) Wow you've been SO busy in the last year. I think I'm a bit of a geek and I haven't done HALF that blogger related stuff. Blogger hacking? For real? Did you hack someone's blog and write a post saying Yvonne was 'ere? ;o) Anyway, many congrats and here's to your 2nd anniversary!

laurie said...

and here i thought you were older than me! :)

happy anniversary. will you reveal why your name was hellojed?

i've always wondered.

Anonymous said...

Happy anniversary to It Had Better Be Good!

Just want to say how much I enjoy reading your blog and following your journey as a writer :-) Looking forward to whatever comes next...

Jacqueline Meldrum said...

It has been a pleasure keeping up with you during the last year! Happy Blog Birthday!

Jen said...

Happy Blog Birthday! Amazing what you've achieved in a year and brilliant that we've been able to keep you company while you did it :)

Alix said...

Happy Blog Birthday. Sounds like you had a very good year, hope the next one is as good. Glad I found you I've enjoyed reading you.

Karen said...

Blog Birthday Greetings! You've had a very busy year.

I'm a recent convert to the joys of blogging, and hope I'll still be at it in a year :o)

Yvonne said...

Cal, you've just given me a great idea! ;)

Laurie, hellojed is the password that Daniel uses in Microserfs by Douglas Coupland - one of my favourite books!

Jen, thank you so much. I really enjoy your blog too.

Holler, it's been a pleasure following you too!

Jen, thank you! It's been great to follow your writing experiences too.

Alix, thank you for your lovely comment. I'm glad I found you too.

Karen, thanks! Keep up with the blogging!

Flirty Something said...

well done on your first year and good luck with the second!

HelenMWalters said...

Happy Blog Birthday!

Yvonne said...

Flirty and Helen, cheers!

Anonymous said...

Happy (how do I say?) blog birthday? Anyway, congratulations for the great journey. I think we started about the same time. Yeah, in couple of days it'll be mine.

Do you remember your first comment on my blog? It was on my 4th post "Is this writer’s block?". You said: "Your article made me chuckle. You’ve just used your get out of jail card though!"

I am a subscriber to your blog since then.

Keep going... long, long way...

Yvonne said...

Hi Alfaking, thank you and I remember that you were one of the first blogs I ever read and subscribed to! Will you mark your blog's first birthday too?

Anonymous said...

Happy blog birthday and here's to many more!

Anonymous said...

Sure, Yvonne. Yours has inspired me a lot. Watch out tomorrow. Cheers.

Yvonne said...

Thanks Caroline!

Alfaking, I subscribe to your blog but for some reason I can't view the actual pages, either on Firefox or IE. Very strange. I'll try to view it on The Ours' website tonight though!

Betty the Sheep said...

Happy 1st Blog Birthday!

Anonymous said...

I can't figure what's wrong. I checked on IE, it seems to work. I don't know if there's some problem in your region, because my sister-in-law reported the same problem from UK last week. I'll ask my webmaster to check it again this evening.

Meantime, my birthday post is up: Fly my butterfly.

Let me know if you can view it.

Yvonne said...

Hi Betty, thanks!

Alfaking, I'm still not able to view your site, very strange. I tried my fella's computer too but no luck. And my subscriptions to your blog only show the first few sentences so I can't read them all. I am trying though!

Anonymous said...

Strange. Sometimes an IP is freezed. Try resetting the router/modem. Or try proxy server.
Well, anyway... this IT thing...