This Friday on Miss Write's blog I'm sharing a poem I knocked up at Towcester Writers this week. 

I set the group the task of pulling five random and mystery words from a bowl and writing a poem or piece of prose using all five of them. My five words were:

PIZZA                           YARIS
WEDNESDAY              PURPLE CUSHION
JANICE

Here's what materialised!

Janice the Pizza Lover

Janice was a pizza lover,
Hawaiian was her choice
She never munched while on the move,
Imagining her Yaris as a Rolls Royce.

Janice was looking for a job;
Where else could she work?!
Pizza Express made her a waitress
With responsibilities she couldn't shirk.

Janice started work on a Wednesday,
The quietest day of the week. 
She dropped no plates and spilled now wine, 
And put up with the chef's cheek.

Janice made some friends that night
In her new team of young staff.
A pizza, she was given to take home
To say "welcome and thanks for the graft."

Janice was feeling pleased with herself,
And was looking forward to another slice.
Juggling her car keys and the pizza box
She caught a delectable whiff. 

Janice's car became a kareoke booth -
She sang the whole way home
Oh disaster! She swerved to avoid a cat,
And the pizza took on a life of its own. 

Janice looked at the seat to her left.
A large red stain beamed up at her.
Her precious car no longer a sparkling Rolls -
The old banger now reeked of pizza.

Janice arrived home in quite a different mood;
Her mum knew something was up.
Story told, mum chucked her a pillow.
"Here - this purple cushion will cover it up!"

Janice still dives her little old Yaris,
And she still eats pizza, none to share.
The cushion is a bolster to bottoms -
Passengers of the Yaris, beware!

Lou x

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Born To be A Tourist

Image from Just Eat

Just a quickie - this was my travel blog post for the week... It's on a poetry theme, so I thought I should do some cross-posting.

A Question Of Travel: A Poetry Critique. 

Let me know what you think!

I post on Born to be a Tourist every Monday, so keep checking for more of the good travel stuff!


Until Friday, 

Lou x

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...And on Twitter
Born To be A Tourist

Image from Travel And Go

Hootsuite... Facebook Insights... Google Anayltics... Website monitoring... 

Writers are not known for being good at statistics, and I'm firmly in the no-can-do camp. I'm not a big one for numbers (words are my game, baby!), but even I can handle some web monitoring. There are many ways you can easily monitor your website use and social media reach. 

How many of us really get to grips with it all though? I'm going to share with you the statistics I think are the more useful ones and the more interesting ones from the plethora of information on offer. 

My Website

I judge the success of my website and blog by the following:

1. How many individual people visit in one month
   
   For example, when I posted the blog entry of I'M HOME, that day I got almost 400 hits. Over the week this obviously increased. I don't think many people would read my blog more than once, so his means I am reaching a lot of people daily with my blogging. 
   
   In my first month of my travel blog (Born To Be A Tourist, started in January 2013) I received over 1200 hits. This amazed me, as I was new to the travel blogging game, and nowhere near well-known. This gave me a great boost!
   
   It's interesting to see how these numbers go up and down between the two blogs. Even on the quiet weeks I get over 1800 hits on each, though, so I can't be doing too badly!
   
   
2. The number of comments I receive on a new blog post
   
   Of course, I love it when people comment on my blog. I've never had negative feedback; constructive, yes, but not negative. I love to hear from my readers, especially if that blog struck a chord with them. Please do leave me a comment!
   
   Keeping track of how many comments a blog receives is not always the best way to measure its success, but it's one of my favourite monitoring methods. It doesn't show what EVERY reader thinks (most don't bother to comment at all), but it really helps with my confidence as a writer and builds a relationship with my readers. 

My Twitter

I pretty much judge my Twitter success on the number of retweets I get. I don't keep a count, but I thank every retweeter and I'm grateful for them spreading what I have tweeted. 

This is the way to succeed in the of game Twitter - it's not counting not the number of followers you have. Sure, followers will follow if they see a retweet, but twitter is about broadcasting. And if someone re-broadcasts something you've said, it can only be a good thing. They think what you have said is insightful, funny, useful, interesting... etc. 

Of course, I retweet as much of the good stuff I find from other people (writers or not) and organisations too. 

My Facebook

My Facebook page is where it all began - it predates even my website. Facebook are very clever, creepy, almost, in their monitoring of the ways you use the social networking site. However, it can be useful for people who host 'pages'. I get regular updates as to how many people my posts have reached, the gender and age of my fans, the countries and cities they're from, which websites have acted most strongly as referrers, and what the highest performing posts are (i.e. the ones which encouraged the most engagement or which had the most people look at it). 

If I'm honest, the stats I only really pay attention to on Facebook are 'total reach' - I've noticed evening posts get more exposure - and the number of fans the page has. As long as the second one doesn't start declining, I know I'm providing content people want to read. 

So, I'm watching. I'm trying to figure out what you like to read online from my writing world. If you like what you see, please retweet. Please share on Facebook. Please visit my blog again. I am grateful for every single one of my readers, and I hope you like what you see!

How many of these tools do you use? How helpful have they been? 

All the best, 

Lou x

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Born To be A Tourist

Deciding the date of our forthcoming nuptials was the easiest process - it amazed me when we decided on a date within a week of being married.

The date of our wedding will be... drum roll please... 

Thursday 21st August 2014

How did we decide on the date?

Well, my dad works part time (every other month), so we are limited to 6 months out of 12 if we want my parents to be there - of course we do!!! And 'there' is abroad, in Costa Rica, so it's not a case of popping down somewhere for the day. 

My mum works in a school, so it made sense to keep the wedding trip to the school holidays. 

February half term and Easter are out of the question - too soon! May is even pushing it, really, to give people enough time to book flights etc. October half term is not a great option either as it's in the middle of rainy season in Costa Rica. And Christmas? Don't go there!!! There's way too much happening then to add a wedding to the mix!

This means August. It's still 'low season' in Costa Rica and before the rainy season, and we can use the bonus day off in our annual leave allowance for the August Bank Holiday if we plan carefully!

Then we started thinking... A beach wedding. We had the smart thought to book the ceremony for a weekday to try to avoid as many other people as possible enjoying the beach at the weekend. We plucked 'Thursday' out of the bag. There's only so many Thursdays in August this year (4) so we provisionally went with the 21st to plan around. We need to factor in some before and after events too (e.g. reception), so this really helped. In actual fact, we stuck with that exact date. 

Funny coincidence 

Mi prometido (fiance) pointed out... August is the 8th month. My birthday is on the 8th (February). The 21st is the same date of my boyfriend's birthday (September). A good omen - the're there if you look hard enough, haha!

Phew!

This was all decided in 15 minutes flat. Easy! 

Now the fun really starts...

Lou x

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Born To Be A Tourist

This year is going to be a big one. I'm getting married!

The Proposal

My boyfriend proposed on New Years Eve after we'd finished watching the fireworks in London. Technically, I suppose, it was January 1st 2014, but that was the night. It goes without saying I didn't hesitate to reply "SI!!!" to his important question in Spanish. I couldn't be happier!!!

Woah, woah, hold up. Why did he propose in Spanish?

My groom-to-be is Costa Rican, so we're bringing the two families together on a Caribbean beach (east coast). The reception will follow in his hometown in the style of a HUGE party. We'll be having a UK and Costa Rican reception, so I'm a lucky girl and get to wear the dress three times!

Yesterday was the last time me 'n' he will be together until May as his "tourist" status only allowed him a three month stay here in the UK, so this new writing topic will keep me occupied, if nothing else! What better time to start sharing the story. 

Why impinge on your writing blog with wedding news?

It's still writing... writing about our wedding plans!

I shan't be doing a whole new blog about the big day, (I already have this writing themed one and a travel blog, each of which I post to weekly) but I want to document our journey in some way for friends, family, and future kiddies who will hopefully appear someday. I will blog as and when, nothing regular, just when I have something interesting to share with you. I have created a tag on this blog called 'My Wedding', so that's the best place to find posts about our wedding, should you wish to have a nosey look. 

I hope you enjoy reading about our journey! If not, don't worry, the regular writing posts will be as regular as usual. 

***Thanks, baby, for your support on this. You've always been so supportive of my blogging xxx ***

Lou x

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Born To Be A Tourist

It's International Book Giving Day, so a perfect time to tell you which books I was given on my birthday last week. 

You should know this - if in doubt, buy me a book! It was my birthday last Saturday and my mum pulled it out the bag again with a great title. 

STONER ~ John Williams

'Stoner' was book of the year 2013, according to Waterstones. I'm currently finishing the second of my two Christmas book presents, but I look forward to getting stuck into this new one. Having not read a lot in the last few months (Christmas, work disruption, fiance in the country with me!), I'm really looking forward to getting a few volumes under my belt before Easter. 

I have yet to buy myself a birthday present (personal tradition, not to be missed!), and I'm thinking I might try to clear out some of my Amazon Wishlist of books. I'll try to limit myself!

Have a great weekend all, see you next Friday. 

Lou x

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Born To Be A Tourist

Last week I went off-piste a bit and blogged about something non writing related (Feeling Challenged? Feel Better - Friday 31st January), so this week it's firmly back to the theme!

I discovered this colourful image on AFAR's travel blog and thought "what a great prompt that would be for my writer friends!" So, here it is! Take it, go where your pen takes you!

Happy writing - see you next week!

Lou x

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Born To Be A Tourist 

***Did you see Monday's travel blog post on windy Norfolk?***