The Second Time Around: Contrasting My Two Experiences Being Freshly Pressed

What does this mean, exactly?

I was Freshly Pressed for the first time back in August of last year and lightning just struck twice: I was selected again for the honor this past Friday.  In the wake of the original selection, I wrote what I still regard as one of my favorite blog posts, The Absolute Last Post I Will Make About Being Freshly Pressed, but it turns out that title was misleading, because I have more to say (as is often the case).

That first piece, Blog Posts I Didn’t Write, was selected back in August and is fairly typical of what I write here at Do Not Get Sick in the Sink, Please: a short, (hopefully) humorous, non-fiction piece about something not particularly important (but, wait, maybe it really is important?) which includes a few naughty words.  The post that was selected on Friday, Welcome to the Committee, is not so typical: a long-ish (at 1700+ words it’s about three times longer than my usual posts), fictional piece that included the word “sausage” and was written in response to the Weekly Writing Challenge over at the Daily Post.  Last August, I hit 3,300 page views in a single day for Blog Posts I Didn’t Write; Welcome to the Committee is seeing a much more modest ~200 views  a day over the weekend, which isn’t really much of an increase over my usual daily page views.  I picked up 80 new followers the day I was first published on Freshly Pressed; this time, it looks like I’ve added about 35 new followers as of this writing.

I’m an analytical person, so I’ve found it interesting to contrast the two experiences.  In the interim between the first time I was Freshly Pressed and the second time, I’ve read a lot of blog posts from writers who bemoan never having been selected and sometimes even criticize the blog posts that are selected.  For what it’s worth, I think the blog posts that get selected for Freshly Pressed are often real head scratchers, including my own.  Neither post I’ve had Freshly Pressed is my best work, but I do appreciate the recognition that comes from being selected, and the wider audience I’ll achieve for my writing.

I guess I’ll close this post by suggesting that folks looking to be Freshly Pressed consider responding to the prompts over at the Daily Post.  Your odds of being selected improve dramatically because you’re only competing against the bloggers who choose to respond to the prompts, rather than the six gazillion other daily blog posts here at WordPress.

We will now return to our regularly scheduled programming, in which I write about sex in the absolutely least erotic way possible.