The 12 Best Ways to Get People to Read Your Blog

Here it is! You're welcome! The best ways to get people to read your blog! Ready? Cause this may be your ticket to success & glory.

1. Title your Post "The 12 Best ways to get People to Read your Blog.
2. Put your Post in the form of a list, but keep it to a palatable number of options. Most people will only read up until 15, though they prefer 10 and under.
3. Put a swear word in the title. "Fuck" is your best bet, especially if you're a woman since it still seems charmingly shocking for a woman to use the word.
4. Claim to have "The Best Ways to...." something, because we all want shortcuts and guarantees.
5. Mention wine, cheese and chocolate as viable coping techniques.
6. If you're a man talk about your adorable incompetence with your children, which isn't really incompetence since it still seems charmingly shocking for a man to take care of his children.
7. Get on the Huffington Post. And if you figure out how, let me know.
8. Use a charming stick figure pictorial, because it takes less time to read, and who really has time to read. (Plus there is the potential for t-shirts)
9. Be genuinely talented and original. And if you figure out how, let me know.
10. Spend 95% of your time promoting your blog, by reading and commenting on other people's sites, posting and reposting on any and all social media, trying to get published on other sites, promoting your submissions on other people's sites, finding free and cheap ways to advertise your blog; and spend the other 5% of your time writing.
11. Be lucky.

I've never been good at the business side of being creative. I've always accredited it to the firm belief that I am lazy. And while that is still a viable contender, after many years I realize it stems more from the firm belief that I do not believe in myself. I lack the conviction of my confidence. Ironically, though I still hang on to enough confidence to continue pursuing creativity as a profession. There is a part of me that knows I am good but does not believe I am good.

I blame my family. That's convenient and also ragingly adolescent. Let me explain. I come from a large family with a huge range in ages. We rarely occupy the same space for much longer than it takes to talk about the traffic or which route we took from the airport; holidays or weddings for a couple of days at a time. Our parents, to their credit, raised us to be independent; mostly by example as they were both competent and independent to a fault. So, these intermittent gatherings never lasted long because people had to get back to their jobs and lives in San Francisco and Michigan and Chicago and Iowa and Boston and everywhere else. But whenever we parted whether in person or at the end of a phone call, we would always exchange I love you's. And we meant it. But, my theory is that it all happened so fast and so routinely that I found myself somewhere in my thirties realizing that I knew I was loved, but I never felt loved. That, of course is not their fault, so let me amend my thesis statement, I blame myself.

So, my armchair therapeutic conclusion is that if I never felt fully loved, how on earth would I believe that anything I created was fully worthy? And there lies the self-sabatoge. To feel fully loved, I would have to make myself fully vulnerable, I would have to take a closer look at all the not-so-glib and not-so-pretty nooks and crannies of me and wonder if after the fantastic voyage I would emerge and still like myself. Or, more dangerously, let other people like me and be ok with it.

 I guess it is now time to loop this back around to my professional stasis. I know I am good, or that  I can be good enough. I fear I am no more than that, and so I rely on good enough. I need to climb into my submarine and take a fantastic voyage and search all the nooks and crannies and not so pretty parts that lie in the pool of potential, and not fear what I emerge with. It might be new and undiscovered and great, or it might be that the waters did not run deep, and good is good.

After I convince myself, perhaps it will be easier for me to convince others with the conviction of the new found confidence that "warts and all" is not just a punch line, it is a gateway to rediscovering the root of why creativity is vital. It is a true examination of how we are human, how we connect and stand apart and how our warts are worthy. And now we have reached reason #12

       12. Go all in. And know that fucking chocolate, cheese and wine is the best list to get you through anything.