What does Tim write about?

In the last calendar year, I have produced the suspiciously round number of 140 blog posts. 

Subtracting the 39 or so photo-blogging interludes, that gives us just over 100 actual posts with substantial writing of some sort in them.

Of those, what I write about, in order of frequency is:

1. Grassroots organising, training and facilitating - it's my job, innit, so the blog is where I share and reflect.
2. Books, mainly reviews of SF/fantasy, with a few opinion pieces on the side
3. Music, everything from the problems with the NME's top 100 albums of all time to my ongoing tentative engagement with metal.
4. Political analysis and opinion, for fairly broad values of politics and opinion
5. Everything else - film reviews, creative writing, more personal reflections and things happening in my area.

This isn't according to any conscious plan on my part - I write about what I feel called and inspired to write, as I topple down the hillside of momentum and routine. 

But it does mean that the habit must be pretty well embedded in me if I'm producing something an average of one day in three. 

The question is now - is that enough? Can I do more with this urge to write? Is the blog the right place to do it all?

2013's top ten posts from the blog

As an end of the year flourish, here are the top ten posts from my blog this year by page views.

1. Top Ten Things I Learned From People Power

My top ten gleanings from the Sheila McKechnie Foundation campaigning conference.

2.  Scepticism: I do not think it means what you think it means

Big Issue columnist Brendan O'Neill presents climate scepticism as a censorship issue rather than a science issue - I respecfully disagree.

3. Terrorizer - take a stronger stand on racism

What happens when you can't - or won't - keep artists' self-serving cant or the indirect promotion of hate speech out of your pages. 

4. Welcome to the Warehouse

My photo-blog of life in the office and community space in Digbeth where I work.

5. Wilderness Festival - pathways to the future and neartopian spaces

The first time I think we've really gone to a festival and shown the audience the true depth of Friends of the Earth, and what it might mean for the future. 

6. Too much Twitter outrage makes me want to look at cats

'Twitter in full-on outrage diva mode is like being in one of those pub-discussions-gone-wrong where people tell you earnestly that something is awful, that the world is doomed, the Government can't do anything right, or that Knightmare wasn't anywhere near as good after they introduced the Eye Shield'

7. Interactive world creation - Atlantis Years One and Two

Prep material for a game with friends this Spring - a bit of an outrider as the sole intrusion of full-on geekery into the list.

8. A wasteland of curators: the NME's top 500 albums and the problem with indie

When the Beatles and the Velvet Underground are as experimental as your Top 10 gets, then you know you've got serious ancestor-worship problems.

9. Why did you or people you know vote UKIP?

Open thread in the wake of the May local elections - I did actually get some responses!

10. Against sporks - guest post

The top rated guest post this year was a frontal assault on 'that useless piece of plastic that functions neither as a spoon or a fork.' 

When I audited my blog around this time last year (see part one and part two), the top change i decided to make was to write more about my work with Friends of the Earth, about organizing and politics more generally. As I noted at the time, many people write about the Hobbit movies, less people are writing about the interstices between politics, organising and geek culture.

As the majority of these posts have had more views than all of last year's top ten, albeit still not huge numbers, we can say this is probably paying off. I'm carving out a small but perfectly formed niche for myself. A lot of these views are probably bots, but hey, I have no other way of keeping score. :-)

The other main change I've made is increasing the number of posts - from 72 posts in 2012 to 169 this year, inclusive of this round-up. That's with some help from guest posts (thank you - you know who you are).

What I haven't yet gotten as good at as I might like is regarding the blog as a dialogue rather than a monologue. There have been more comments left this year but with honourable exceptions like the UKIP thread I haven't consistenty sought people's views out. 

I also haven't linked across to other people's blogs or @'tted people on Twitter as much as I might have done, although the top two posts both benefited from RT's via the Big Issue and the #peoplepower hashtag.

So, 2014 should probably be the year when this space becomes a conversation.

More than anything, I've enjoyed the task of regularly writing, of using this space like an auxillary brain, sharing my views and working out what I actually think.

If you've been reading - thanks for visiting and I hope you come back next year.

Auditing my blog - my top ten posts

This week just gone, I've been revisiting Blogging Heroes by Michael A Banks. It's a swift, helpful set of interviews with some of the world's most-read, most prolific bloggers with lots of helpful advice for those people like me who are ... not quite in that league, to put it mildly.

I've drawn on its advice to do a very helpful audit of my blog; while I keep it mainly as an ongoing exercise in writing and collecting my thoughts, I would like it to gain a broader readership than at present and begin to cover aspects of my professional life as well as my personal interests.

After all, when I sit down and think about it I do have a pretty awesome job helping to support a wonderful environmental volunteer movement.

Tune in tomorrow for the advice I took from Blogging Heroes, but here's the current state of play.

The state of play

Last year I managed a grand total of 72 posts - an average of one post every five days or so. Typically each post gets between 5 and 20 views, and at least 2 or 3 of those views are probably me.

Occasionally, I do a little better, and here's my top 10 most-viewed posts since the blog began. Amusingly, if you google Butcher Babies poster I'm in the first page of Google results, which perhaps explains why I got 9 new views of a six-month old post over the past month.

Bonus Butcher Babies feature - satirical caption c...	97
The Metal Hammer Butcher Babies Poster Headdesk In...	97
Butcher Babies caption competition results	85
Creative writing snippet - Eldritch horror on the ...	81
Escape The Cheese : behold the publicity	69
Cream tea, Nick Berry and anomie on the Yorkshire ...	65
Our "at least they made the trains run on time" co...	64
Thoughts on sincerity in metal	64
The X-Factor has a socratic question for you. camp...	57
Magpiemoth's review of the year and Christmas mess...	39

 So, that's:

• Four posts about metal (and the gender politics thereof)
• One piece of creative writing
• One promoting a Valentine's fundraiser I was involved in
• Three bits of general cultural/political musing
• One personal update

 What they have (broadly) in common are:

• Some of my better writing
• Photos
• An explicit invitation to comment ... or at least an opinion to challenge
• Original content
• Have often been retweeted or Facebook-liked at least once

 Other types of posts which haven't cropped up in the Top 10

• Videos (I've been running a video of the week feature since November of last year)
• Recipes
• Photos
• Storifications
• Film and book reviews (generally SF, fantasy, arthouse)
• Examining social media and online tools in my campaigning or personal life.
• Round-ups of links, news etc

Some of these are good for as external memory, as opposed to necessarily must read posts. But, those are the kind that I don't tend to Facebook, Tweet or send around e-mail lists, in any case.