Today's my Blogversary!

I'm doing a giveaway later, but I have a lot of things to say, and I know it totally sucks to wade through a long post about feelings and whatever when all you want is PRIZES, so I'm going to post the giveaway in a little bit. (Like around 3pm. Stay tuned for that.)

For this post, I'm going to get all sentimental.

A year ago today, I started this little blog. I picked kind of a lame name, made a pink and black header, and hurled myself into cyber space with a post about how you shouldn't read my blog. And for awhile, no one did. It was just me, myself, and my Aunt Wendy. Then my sister tagged along. I figured it was because I was the only one writing about writing, because who would POSSIBLY want to read about THAT? I wrote about my NaNo project, and put up responses to oneword.com prompts, and posted ridiculous pictures of my dogs and myself. 

And then, somewhere along the road, I found a whole community of other writers. I have to give some credit to Shannon Messenger for this one, because she was one of my first regular commenters who was not related to me, and I know when I clicked on her blog I realized there definitely were other writers out there in the world. A whole freaking lot of them.

And somehow, in the past year, I've gained almost 300 followers. (I'm sure if my posts hadn't been so anorexic in the past month, I'd have more. But I've got more on that in about two point five paragraphs, so hold on to your breeches, kids.) I can't believe that almost 300 strangers care about what I have to say. You listen to my crazy stories. Your comments make my day. You send me emails asking for advice! You are my confidants, my crit partners, my shoulders to cry on, and my pals to celebrate with. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for reading.

In case you were wondering (aren't you? I totally am.), here are the top 5 posts ever posted on See Heather Write:

1. The best thing to happen to my writing career. EVER. (Which at the time was getting into the Eckerd College Writer's Conference, and by now is getting into VCFA. Hopefully by my next blogoversary, it will be "landing a major book deal." Anyway, I think this post is mostly popular because of the awesome gifs found within.)
2. What Makes a Character Kick Butt? (In which I talk about my favorite female main characters at the time, who would totally still make the list, but would have to scoot over for several more additions. Hm, I might need to do a version 2.0 on this one...)
3. Happy Kissing Day! (This one was from a blogfest.)
4. Should Writers Talk About Their Rejections? (A recent post, featuring guest agent Weronika Janczuk)
5. On Boy Middle-Grade (My notes from an SCBWI workshop)

To the very few of you who I've been fortunate enough to meet - it was awesome. I hope to see you again some day. To those of you I haven't met yet, I hope to see you some day! Really, this blog has meant the world to me, and having a place to talk about writing, and other writers to share it with, and other blogs to read...I've learned so, so much from it all.

OK, so now I feel like I have to give a little apology for my lameness this past month. And not a half-ass one, like my last one. Because to be honest, me gushing about how awesome you all are, then you glancing over at my archives and seeing I've posted less than 10 times this month is pretty pathetic and comes off as disingenuous. OK, so the first thing is that I've had some MONSTER revisions to tackle. They're great revisions, and I'm so super pumped about them, because I finally feel like my book is worthy to be read by someone other than me or my dogs (see what I did there?). But it's pretty much requiring a complete rewrite. Very few words are making it through. I'm slogging away, putting as much time away as I can (and making great progress!), which is actually less time than I usually have because of point two, which is some job-related personal stuff. I don't want to get all depressing/personal on you, but let's just say that job hunting is a really gigantic time suck when you have a mortgage and need to take that crap seriously.

Stupid adulthood.

Anyway, so that's that. But I have resolved to make a New-Blog-Year resolution. Because this post and this past year has made me realize just how important you all are to me. I mean, I'm pretty sure one of you once recognized me by my earrings ALONE, which pretty much made my day. (They were the earrings from this vlog, and someone recognized me at SCBWI-LA when I was wearing them. I KID YOU NOT.) I will read your posts (I miss that, so much!) I will post here (no more skipping Sunday Funday! And I need some other posts, too! Because once a week makes for a sad, skinny blog.)

And I will post contests. Like the one I'm posting later today. Stay tuned! (It's a good one.)

And thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my blog-writing, WIP-slaving heart.