Hey, remember the time Maureen Johnson broke my blog? Oh right, it was yesterday.
Me in the afternoon vs. me in the evening. (Credit: Sailor Moon screencaps.)
In fairness, it wasn’t JUST Maureen. A staggering number of authors/writers/bloggers linked to my post “A reminder about what really matters” — like the INTERN, Stephanie Perkins, Myra McEntire, Malinda Lo, Kate Hart, Carrie Ryan, Lisa Schroeder, even agent Michelle Wolfson, among many, many others. To say I was floored would be putting it mildly. More like I went right past the floor, down through the earth’s crust and into the core.
The rush of traffic from everyone’s Twitter followers (thousands!) had me dazed and grinning all afternoon. Y’all’s comments blew me away. I had no idea that what I’d written would affect and resonate with so many people. I’m glad it did.
But then, around 5 p.m. my website crashed. I had a very basic hosting plan, which had served me fine for years, but it couldn’t handle the sudden spike. After hemming and hawing (and hoping things would magically fix themselves — because, you know, they always do??) I ended up having to switch to a new host, which got me up and running within an hour. Luckily I had a backup of my site from last week, and I was able to copy and paste recent comments from my inbox. Stressful, but successul.
Live and learn and upgrade your servers, eh?
(Still, I really regret all that downtime, when people who may have been trying to come here got “this account has been suspended for bandwidth overage” instead. If you know anyone who wanted to read the post and couldn’t, please let them know it’s up again!)
Anyway, I know that this incident, like the one in October, is just another “15 minutes of fame.” But it’s still exciting and encouraging to see my name linked in any way, shape, or form with so many writers that I admire. It’s also … interesting, for lack of a better word, that something I wrote took on such a life of its own. I mean, it’s only a blog post. I can’t imagine the magnitude of what I might feel when something “bigger” (a personal essay, a short story, a novel) takes off.
Or rather, I can imagine it, and I can’t wait.
12 responses to “How the YA blogosphere made my day (and crashed my website)”
I am not at all surprised that your post resonated with so many people. There was something so true and real about it, something that couldn’t NOT strike a chord. How cool it must have been for you to watch all the excitement unfold yesterday!! You must have been on Cloud 9! :)
I was going to leave a comment yesterday but… you know ;)
Congrats! It was a great post, well deserved of all the attention.
It sounds like a very surreal experience. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer person. :)
Oh and I adore the Sailor Moon caps :p
Congratulations. Well deserved.
(And, yes, always have backups. :-) )
So glad I got to go back and read ‘A reminder about what really matters,’ as I missed it. I can certainly see why it crashed your site. It’s a really special message, Kristan. Congrats (not on the broken site, just on the well-deserved reason for it ;-) ).
What you say (type) matters more than you think it does – in a good way. :) Congrats on the linkage and getting that message out there. I know I bookmarked it for re-reading and I’m sure a lot of other people did as well.
VERY cool. :)
Hmm. I miss all the fun with my stupid day job. Off to read the post! And congrats Kristin ; -)
Thanks, everyone!
Shari-
Cloud 900. ;)
Kristan – I’ve been meaning to link to that post since you wrote it, and I did today (perfect day, it being Thanksgiving!) It’s a WONDERFUL post and totally deserved to be linked to by the entire blogosphere! And how exciting that your website crashed! That’s huge! I have deluxe hosting just in case I ever write a post as popular as yours :)
Okay, now I understand why I couldn’t get on your blog! What a great problem to have :)