The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 150,000 times in 2014. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 6 days for that many people to see it.

The top blog posts in 2014 were:

10 Winning Ways to Open Your Novel (Craft of Writing)

This article, by Darcy Pattison, outlines tips from her book Start Your Novel and lists a number of ways to start novels, giving examples from the top 100 opening lines of all times.

Twisting the Plot for a Great Mystery (Craft of Writing)

Connie Shelton‘s article covers the elements of what makes a good mystery with a focus on great plot twists.

Six Tips for Engaging Readers within two seconds: The Hook in fiction and memoir (Craft of Writing)

Paula B of The Writing Show, outlines emphasizes the importance of capturing a reader’s attention within the first few seconds, providing examples from a variety of genres.

Emotions that escalate: How to build tension successfully (Craft of Writing)

Drawing upon examples from her bestselling book The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression, Angela Ackerman highlights how emotions escalating can create solid tension in a novel.

The most commented on post was:

Wattpad: A Powerful Tool for Book Marketing (The Business of Writing)

Linda Poitevin, whose books have charted well over 4 million reads on Wattpad, explains how she used this social platform to garner a huge audience for her novel Gwenneth Ever After.

As 2015 continues, we look forward to sharing more articles on the craft and business of writing as well as spotlighting authors, great books and tips about the world of publishing, along with an ongoing series of audio interviews with authors for the Kobo Writing Life Podcast.