I always thought that having a viral blog post—a post that spirals out and out and out, reaching tens of thousands of people—would catapult me into the upper echelons where real bloggers live. The bloggers who can be assured that nearly everything they post will get plastered all over people’s Facebook news feeds, and who have agents and editors e-mailing them, saying, “So, do you have any book ideas?” Bloggers like, say, Glennon Melton, whose viral blog post “Don’t Carpe Diem” led ultimately to her first book being bid on by something like eight New York publishing houses…
And guess what? It didn’t really change anything. I still don’t have agents and publishers knocking down my doors. I still get fewer than five comments on most of my blog posts. “Why I am a Christian Democrat” still brings in a fair amount of traffic; it is almost always one of the most popular posts on my blog. But otherwise, my writing life today is very much the same as it was back in October 2012. I write here a few times a week. I guest post for friends’ and colleagues’ blogs. Without a solid idea for another book, I’m focusing on getting articles and blog posts published by print and online magazines, including the Christian Century and Sojourners.