The post I wrote for OS last week, Why I’m Alone,  spun into the blogosphere, and consequences were both good and bad. I learned quite a bit from the experience, which might be helpful for you too. I guess this is a meta post.

You can’t always tell. I wrote the piece on March 20, in the morning. Normally I would have sent it here to OS, my beloved home base. But there were many interviews appearing that day, and I felt it would be like an orphan post, kind of out of place, and the topic wouldn’t have worked at that moment. So I sent it into the big, bad world of The Huffington Post, where I’ve been blogging for a couple of years.

Like many non-celeb posts over there, it was off the page pretty fast, into archives.  And posts in the Living section often garner no comments, no matter how good. I figured that I’d send it over here in a couple of days where I really wanted it to go, when the interviews meme, and some carping and tetchiness died down.

The next day I checked my own website’s stat counter. Whoa. I had 400 times the normal viewers. The bar chart rose into the sky. Why? So I checked, and they were coming from Huffpost, whose editors had put the post back on the site, on the top of the Big News section's Relationships page (it’s still there, I think), with a graphic. Maybe an editor liked it. And this started a chain reaction.

The post was now also placed in their Living Section, in the left column, with a blurb and photo. And  then I noticed that their home page scrawl said that it had become one of the most popular  posts in any of the sections, up just a while but with almost 60 thousand on-site viewers, and counting. Wha’ happened? I was delighted but bewildered. A day ago it had seemed like a loser.

I sent the post  to OS on March 23, wondering how my friends here would feel about it. Was it a fluke?  Well, it climbed to the top of both rated and read for 12 hours. Go know.

Try to figure out why something works. “Why I’m Alone” wasn’t dramatic, or literary or beautifully written (although it was carefully written, as I try for most of my writing). It was just a glorified listing really, which flowed out of me in a rush. I’ve done better, worked harder and gotten less notice.

I learned lots from the comments, which I read carefully. The most frequent compliments were honest, authentic, universal, simple, heartfelt and funny. I wish I could figure out how to do that in every post, but there’s no telling, because I have written other things that I thought had some of that, and they never caught fire.

Rewrite. After reading the comments, I edited the post even more, even after it was up. Writing is rewriting. The OS version was quite different from the original. For example in the original I kept repeating “I’m alone because” at the beginning of each line, which got tiresome. Also I took out a reference to a downer about illness. Too attention-grabbing. I also added a last line about appreciating relationships, so I didn’t come across as a bitter man-hater (I’m not, in case you never read me).

The power of the blogosphere is amazing, with both good and bad consequences. With major sites and RSS feeds, you get spun out and you have your 15 minutes, and then the next thing comes along. But if you put yourself out there, realize you’re up for grabs, and you better not take it personally. I Googled and found that the post was featured on many other sites, including one for young singles, jezebel.com. About 30 thousand young women viewed it there, writing hundreds of comment threads; many of them wrote that they were sending the post around to friends and family.

In this past week I’ve gotten emails through my own website from people all over the world. Touching ones. Funny ones, Invitations to dinner. Mock proposals. And I even was offered a gig to be a contributing columnist from the editor at a well-regarded magazine which caters to singles. (We are in the courtship phase, seeing what might happen. In this economy, when everyone including me is losing work, that is a little miracle.)

However, lots of people now knew intimate things about me. And the post was featured on a site that chooses one post a day to skewer for fun, so it got hundreds of mean comments like "hairy old bat,” and “her husband would have left her if he hadn’t died.” Someone blew  up my photo from the “about us” section of my  website and said I had “old hair.” But this might be the best part of all: I laughed. It took me a long time but I’m secure enough to not be defined by ranters.

In fact, I took their criticism and edited even further For example, I took out a line about not wanting to get a bikini wax. No need to give them material.

I do realize more  now that every time I publish a post, someone may be reading who could change my life for better or worse. I’m more aware of that than I had been, in terms of using names or telling tales or opening up more than I’m comfortable.

Diggs  and other connectors do count. Maybe the Digg icon on OS could be placed more prominently, like it is on Huffpost, and put right next to the thumb, so that when we rate we can easily Digg or Buzz or whatever. So if you got a rating of 20, you’d hope for 20 Diggs. That would assure us of thousands of readers beyond OS. I got over 80 Diggs on Huffpost. Probably none here.  And I know that helped the post go viral.

Don’t worry so much about EPs and covers. Really. When I sent this to OS they didn’t award it a cover or even an EP. And even without that boost, OSers still made this little post my highest-rated ever.

A week after I posted it, “Why I’m Alone” is still featured in the Relationships section on Huffpost, and it's now ensconced in our new, accessible archives here, and is still floating to other sites and through email. My website stats are still way up, though now only 10 times more than average, and I’m still getting emails from readers.

The visibility of that post  is at 14 minutes and counting, but my secret hope is that one of my friends will soon unknowingly include me in a mass emailing,  with a “You gotta read this –send it to 10 friends.”