Thoughts on Ten Years of Hubpages Participation and over 2 Million Page Views.

I remember my decision over ten years ago, to not just write in my notebooks, but to try and write quality works that I could share with others.

People would often tell me I was a "good Storyteller" and I would even occasionally be asked to repeat one of my stories for others. Of course, this was good for my ego and I would eagerly sit down with these friends and tell my story to them, again.

In fact, I would even write some of these stories down in one of my notebooks, hoping that someone else would ask me to "tell us about .....".

So, it was only natural for me to eventually look for a writer's site on the web, in hopes of finding a place I could share moy stories. As I researched which site was the best for myself and others like me who were eager to improve our skills and could communicate and share our works with the world.

Well, after experimenting with a number of sites that, at first, showed promise but who eventually turned to be not what I had hoped for, I found an interesting writer's site called HubPages

Since then, I had been happily trodding along, writing and learning and evolving my skills, via the HubPages System.

And then one morning, I realized that I had passed a landmark of sorts with over 1.5 Million views of my Hubs.

Even though this is not an officially recognized milestone with HubPages, it was an accomplishment that I was quite proud of marking down, on my "bragging list" if you will.

Over the period of time since that day, I have written many more Hubs.

Honestly, some of my early Hubs were good; but at first, most of them were pretty bad.

It was along this period of time that i concentrated more on reading my fellow Hubber's works and as I did so, I picked up on some tricks and new writing skills that made my Hubs more popular with readers.

Of course as I got better, I became more and more aware of the ugly writing errors that were sitting on HP, in my older writings. Over time I actually deleted some of them, mostly out of embarrassment. But i rewrote the majority of them over time to make them not only a better read, but also more informative.

So yes, I am proud of the Millions of eyeballs that scanned across my articles and I like to think, they also stayed long enough to finish reading my works, because they were interesting,

I am now a Senior, with white hair and a lot of bad habits, but I am also arrogant enough think the next Million or more views of my writings will come a lot sooner for me.

Long ago, after I got out of the NAVY, I got married and settled down to a family life. And during those first years, I used my GI Bill rights to attend college.

For 14 years I worked a full-time job, and helped my wife raise three children, and I continued taking my College courses. At times I could only carry one class while at other times, i might take two or even three classes at a time.

During one of my classes, an American Literature course, if I remember it right, I received a low grade from the Professor on one of my papers that I had submitted to her and it upset me.

It was just a short story about an experience of mine in the past while hunting deer and I thought it was pretty good.

But the grade on the paper was a "C", which was probably OK for most people, but I had put a lot of time and sweat into writing and rewriting that story. Well, I felt the story was pretty good. So, in my arrogance, I raised my hand and asked my professor;

Just what do I have to do to become a good writer, I felt I had written a really good story and you put a "C" on it.

My Professor (looking back, I now feel she was one of my better teachers) slowly turned to me, dropped her glasses from her eyes and said;

Don, the first thing you need to understand is that the world is full of Good writers, in fact Good writers are literally a dime a dozen as the old adage goes.

I assumed you and your fellow classmates are all here in my class to learn the basic skills necessary to grow yourselves into GREAT writers.

And let me tell you now that you only need to do a few things to be a great writer; you need to Read the great writers of the past and you need to read the popular writers of today. Reading what others write and learning how they get their stories across truly helps a novice writer grow and improve their own writing skills.

At the same time, you have to Write.

In fact you need to write so much and so often that you reach a point where you're almost sick of the sight of that pencil and blank piece of paper lying there on your desk.

That's the point where a real writer picks up the pencil and writes even more.

The great thing or the sad thing, depending on your perspective about this personal need to write is, you'll know if you're a writer; because a writer just has to write.

Everything a real writer sees and hears excites him. It excites him because it puts ideas in their head, an idea for yet another story or poem they can't wait to write down.

Then she looked around at all of us in the classroom and finished with;

It's unavoidable really.

A writer has this feeling inside themselves; a feeling that they just have to do that one thing a normal person ignores; which is put down their thoughts and stories on paper.

And I see that look in yours eyes. The question you just asked me; How can I become a Great Writer?

And I have to stop here. I have no answer to this question of how to be a Great Writer.

Sure, I write, I have to, it's in my blood, and I take such joy in writing.

Am I Great Writer? Well, I don't think so. I do think I am a decent writer, but a Great Writer, that answer has to be answered by someone else, probably long after I am dead..

But Lord, I do enjoy telling a good story, whether it brings tears or smiles to my audience.

I'll keep writing my stories down and someone else can determine whether they're from a Hack, or a Great Writer.

Here I sit, bragging on how many people have read my writings.

I can say that I honestly believe HubPages and my fellow Hubbers have helped me as a writer, and not only can I now write better works than I did ten years ago, but I can give a lot of the credit to HubPages for being there, as a tool for me to use.

HP has been there as a tool I needed and used and will continue to use as long as they're there for me.