Independent bloggers, stand alone writers who post non-viral content, look at numbers. Without the numbers, the follows, the likes and comments, they feel worthless.
If you’ve ever spent time around a whiny blogger, you know the story. Not enough hits, not enough social engagement, not enough validation for them to continue.
Eventually, they give their audience a break and quit. They quit because they started out on the wrong foot. They weren’t writers, they were marketers. Markets change, writers write.
With that said, the overnight Top Ten Reader countries on boomerpdx include:
United States, United Kingdom, Canada, China, Australia, India, Italy, Philippines, Russia, and Kenya, in order of appearance.
Here’s the deal, Kenya spent thirteen minutes on boomerpdx. Who spends that much time on any blog, let alone a regional blog half a world away. The idea alone intrigues me. Enough to find independent bloggers in Kenya and spend time with them? Of course.
Independent Bloggers Set The Table With Slice Of Life
For example:
To call myself a writer, a believable writer with a writing practice, means writing. And reading. Reading and writing go hand in hand with the writer label.
Writers who coddle themselves in the comforts of the their own little world, who can only create when the light is right, like this one, need to meet other writers. I’m no Jack London gripping a pencil like a knife to carve out Call Of The Wild pt.2 on a cabin door in the frozen north, but I do get out now and then.
I met the great James Lee Burke three times in one day. Twice by accident. The third time was awkward.
The first was a Portland coffee place in the morning, then later at Powells downtown where he read. I stopped at Beaverton Powells on the way home and found him there, too. I was probably the only three-timer. We were not amused.
I’m not a literary stalker, but I did go out of my way to meet Ken Kesey in Eugene. I was an English major and former wrestler, Kesey was an Oregon Duck wrestling great, now a fan. I met him outside Mac Court after a match, told him I was a fan, and that I wrestled a guy from his town, and he knew the name.
I took a drive in the country once and passed by his farm, but didn’t stop. That would have been too stalkery.
It’s good to know writers are real people, and Portland is crawling with them.
Then There’s Ellen Urbani
Ms Urbani did a killer one woman show when she spoke at a Willamette Writers meeting five years ago. I wrote a post about it, feeling like a literary reporter.
Since then I’ve read her Facebook posts. Once she needed a wheelchair. When no one else jumped, I offered one, a lightweight sporty rig. She stopped by my place and picked it up. From my sharp observation, she was a writer who borrowed a wheelchair. Pretty basic.
Then she borrowed it again, either before or after a federal agent shot her. She had a bad foot already and needed wheels to go to the Mom Wall part of the Portland protests against police brutality, then got shot in the other foot.
I think she proved her point, and the point of the protests, by the time she healed and returned the chair.
About David Gillaspie
