Pens Around the World in 2023… and going forward

Pens Around the World, our international, Internet-based writers’ group celebrates the start of its fourth year in 2024. With members scattered across the globe from the USA to Singapore, and from Orkney, Sweden and the south-west corner of England, to Spain, Germany and France, we meet virtually to offer support, encouragement and advice.

Join us!

We’re accepting new members now! We especially welcome writers, writing in English, who find themselves far from a nurturing local community. Apply by February 8th by filling out the form under Join Us in the top menu – or just click here.

To learn more about what we do, look around our site! Or read last January’s summary of 2022, that runs over what we do Behind the Scenes and Front of House.

Subscribe!

If you are not interested to join us as a member, we are also delighted to have you as a subscriber. Fill out the subscription form in the right hand margin. (On a mobile phone, find the form by scrolling down.)

As a subscriber you’ll get an e-mail notification when our weekly blog posts on the craft of writing, writing inspiration, etc. are published. Also, our subscribers get the first notice of exciting developments at PATW!

This coming year you’ll be able to read interesting and varied blog posts not only from our members, but also from several fantastic guest bloggers. You wouldn’t want to miss that, would you?

Interest in PATW increasing

In 2023 we said farewell to two members, Sue Borgersen in Nova Scotia and Ali Taha in Toronto, and welcomed Rachel Whitby now living in Spain.

Although our membership has shrunk, interest in our website has grown. During 2023, we saw the average number of our visitors increase by roughly 80% from around 670 a month in the first quarter to around 1230 a month in the fourth quarter!

Where do our visitors come from?

Our visitors come from the following countries (ranked according to frequency).

1. Sweden	6. France	11. China
2. The USA	7. Singapore	12. Italy
3. The UK	8. Spain	13. Switzerland
4. German	9. Canada
5. ‘Other’	10. Finland

One interesting thing about these statistics are the number of visitors we receive from the USA (where we only have one member – Kimberly). It suggests we are getting a lot of interest from non-members there. (Of course the US is also a source of bots.)

The ‘Other’ category is most interesting as we have no members in ‘Other’! We are receiving visits from people coming from such a wide variety of places that our tracking software chooses not to break them down. Low numbers of visits from a variety of different places are unlikely to be bots, but more likely to be actual human beings. (Hurrah!)

A lot of the visits go to our pages that are very interesting for a website administrator but may be less so to the general reader (our log-in page and our forums pages (which includes topics on the business of writing and writig competitions), for example). But you may be as pleased as I am to know that it’s our front page that receives the bulk of visits. Most people (and bots) go there first before opening other pages.

Popular posts published in 2023

In 2023 our ten most opened blog posts (linked below) were:

• On Giving Up Writing by our guest blogger Paddy Kelly (102 readers in November).
• My (John’s) interview with Catherine Pettersson about the Stockholm Writers’ Festival (72 readers in May). (That’s Catherine in the picture to the left.)
• Hanging Out with Your Characters and NYC – A Fine Place for a Writers’ Conference, both by Kimberly Hirsh Kabonga (50 readers in June for the first, 37 readers in September for the second).
• When in Doubt, Go to the Library by Gill Tennant (50 readers in October).
• Writing with Passion and Curiosity by Rachel Whitby (47 readers in December).
• Reading Strategy by Jos Biggs (42 readers in April).
• Journeys and Writing and How did I get to Publication Day, both by Gail Aldwin (39 readers in January and 39 readers in July respectively).
• The Call of the Void by Bruce Louis Dodson (34 readers in May).

I believe that all these posts received more visitors spread through the year after their initial publication, and will continue to receive readers going forward. Some posts from earlier in 2023 continued to get new readers through the year, enough to bump them up in the most popular list for 2023.

Posts from 2022 that withstand the test of time

Among the most read older posts were …

• What’s Your Style… and Why? By Chris Nedahl from May 2022, which garnered no fewer than 57 readers in December 2023
• A Question of Gender and A Cat and Mouse Game, both by Nigel Wild from September and November 2022 respectively. The first got 49 readers last March and the second 38 in July.
• Learning to Just Do It by Debbie Hubbard from July 2022, received 40 readers in December 2023.
• The Ultimate Novel Writing Course – My Experience by former member Angela Williams from December 2022 which was opened by 38 readers in December last year. (Angela’s piece was also opened 71 times in December 2022 when it was first published.)

There was an increase in the number of readers generally towards the end of the year and I think that is reflected in the December figures for the older posts.

Special commendations

Two of our members didn’t see their posts come up in the statistics above. In order for no one to feel left out, here are my special recommendations for your further reading pleasure at Pens Around the World!

Wherefore Art Thou Publisher? by Michael Pudney, published at the beginning of October. What happens when you get a response from no less then two publishers on two separate books … and then silence?

Draw Your Writing Tree by Miriam Landor, published at the beginning of May 2023. A clever introduction to planning your writing life and overcoming your writing fears is particularly appropriate to reference at the start of this new writing year.

That was the year that was …

… So, once again, Onward! To 2024.