Pore Jud is Daid

So I’m a little obsessed with my blog stats.

Actually, truth is, I mostly check when I’ve posted on my blog, although for a reminder of how I stalk myself, check out this old post I just found.

But anyway, whenever I do post something new, I remember how much fun it is to check my site stats.

And WordPress gives me all kinds of fun information like how many people have visited my blog (ok, that one is kind of standard), and which posts/pages are most popular (ok, getting more interesting), where in the world you live (I mean, I don’t want to brag, but all 8 people who live in Malta read my blog), and, probably the most interesting (not counting blog spam but that’s not what this post is about so don’t get me started on that), the search terms people use to find my blog.

So I won’t get into the obvious ones, but I will say that thanks to this lovely post called Choice, Consequence, and the Perfect Manicure, I have had dozens of people take to the internets in search of a manicure, but voila, they find me. A few were even specifically looking for “the consequences of a manicure.” Uh, colored nails??

Some are so random but still, I’m pretty pleased to be associated with the search term. For example, “Who invented the term ‘I crack myself up?’“ I mean, I didn’t invent it, and I’m pretty sure I never claimed to, but I do crack myself up. Also, I liked, “the meaning of ‘because I’m awesome like that.‘” Hmm, I’m noting a theme here.

Anyway, there are a bunch of (what I like to think of as) inside joke search terms, where I’m not totally sure they were looking for my posts, but I can see why they ended up there. Like: “my garbage man is hot“ or a bunch of “eenie meenie miney moe” related ones like the origins of that phrase, is it a good way to make decisions (I’m thinking no), and of course all of the shibumi related search terms.

But today I’m here to talk about the ever popular search term: various incarnations of “poor jessie” and “the sad tale of jessie.” Yes, “poor jessie” indeed.*

I don’t really remember the first time I noticed it, but my brain sort of latched on and jumped to the musical Oklahoma! and the song Pore Jud is Daid  popped into my head. This video is pretty awesome and you should totally watch it for a true appreciation of the awesomeness that is this song. But then come back because I have more to say.

If you’re lazy, watch it later or you can see the lyrics here (or print them for a singalong (not that I did that)). But then come back because I have more to say.

Anyway, don’t ask me to explain, but whenever I see one of these related search terms, or I see that a “Jessie” post is a top viewed site (extremely frequent occurrence), I can’t get that freaking song out of my head.

So in case you don’t know the (supposedly) sad tale of Jessie, you can read it here. But make sure you come back, because I have more to say. Including some seriously happy updates since then.

Oh, oops. I just reread that post and I guess I actually used the phrase “the sad tale of Jessie.” My bad.

But I’m being totally serious now when I say that I’m glad I’m doing this update, because to have this search term fame be the takeaway from those few days of posts is just so wrong.

First of all, the point of my post back then, which people completely missed, so much so that I had to reiterate it in a second post the next day (and you can find that post here (but then come back because I have more to say)) is that you as writers need to believe in yourselves and support each other through this long, difficult journey.

At the same time, you have to put yourself out there, take chances, because if you don’t ever show anyone your manuscript, it will never get read.

To quote the great author Wayne Gretzky, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.

What do you mean he’s a great hockey player not a great author? Po-tay-to, po-tah-to. You get my point.

I hope.

So the reason I’m bringing this up now is because I find (through my aggressive stats stalking) that even nearly six months later, those two Jessie posts continue to be among the most popular ones on my blog. One of them (maybe the second??) was the highest number of hits ever, second only to the day that I reopened to queries.

And these posts continue to rank right up there with my submission info page (!!) many days as my top viewed pages. I think there are real lessons there.

I have been told by writers and editors alike that these were important messages, and I continue to feel strongly about them myself. Perseverance is key.

So whatever happened to Jessie??

We were in active touch back in May, and I read her complete manuscript and we spoke on the phone about it. It was great and she was working on revisions.

And it comes as no surprise to me that Jessie has found an agent. I know we are going to be seeing great things from Jessie in the bookstores, and you can be sure you’ll be hearing about them here on this blog.

Talk about perseverance.

And that, my friends, is The Awesome Tale of Jessie.

And I sincerely hope that the next time I do a post on search terms, I’ll be reporting that there are tons of people-from the US to Malta- searching for “The Awesome Tale of Jessie.” 

See here for the first time I ever figured out how to change the color of the font on my blog. The novelty hasn’t worn off, apparently.

In the meantime, I’ll be searching for Malta.

*Use of “poor jessie’s sad tale” was approved by Jessie prior to publication. In other words, Michelle is not an idiot and did not want to risk a flood of emails sent to Jessie–are you daid?!?