The 'Beyond the Balcony' November Round-Up: Birthday Reflections, Cute Costumes, and a Novel in a Month

November wasn't the most thrilling month ever here on Beyond the Balcony, and I needed to resort to more reposts than I'd have wanted. November is always a tough month as it is the start of prestige movie season, so there is a lot that I want to cover, but also the month where I try to write at least 50k words of a novel on top of my all my usual writing work. I tend to wrestle with tons of ideas for articles but very little time. But I ended up writing the most words ever for my November novel this years with over 70k words. It was a successful writing month even if that wasn't always obvious on the site.

There were some original articles along with the reposts. Here is some of the spotlights of the past 30 days here on Beyond the Balcony.

Top Ten Most Viewed Articles in November 2022: It should be noted that I didn't include episodes of The Movie Breakdown on this list.

10. Siskel & Ebert Display the Danger of the Critic Roadblock: I posted this back in April, so I have no idea what suddenly made it popular now. My best guess is that there was some Googling for the famous critics, and this article somehow did okay in the web searches.

9. One of My Proudest Dad Moments: I am always happy when my bragging of my kids' awesomeness actually leads to a decent audience. This was also posted later in the month, so it did exceptionally well to make the top ten. It is also good that a message about the courage and bravery of kindness, empathy, and love connected with readers.

8. Revisiting the Site: My Argument Against Writing Ideas Down: I originally posted this back in 2014, but most of it still holds true with my current writing strategies. 

7. Positive Thoughts for the Day: Considering everywhere I turn on social media seems to be dripping with negativity, I'm glad my positive thinking pieces attract an audience.

6. Revisiting the Site: Conservative or Liberal: You Don't Need to Be One or the Other: This was initially written in 2017, and my stance on this has only strengthened since that time.

5. The Optimistic November Movie Preview: A Month of Superheroes, True Stories, Murder Mysteries, Animated Adventures, and More: These pieces take a long time to compose, which is why I scrapped them for most of the year. It appears it draws a decent audience, which is a good thing for a site that wants to be about movies. I may look at ways to cut down the workload in the future while keeping the goal of the monthly piece.

4. Hey Look! It's November! Time to Write a Novel in a Month: My yearly tradition of declaring my intentions to write a novel in a month and promoting the lovely NaNoWriMo organization. It is also one of the few yearly pieces that gets some decent audience engagement and interaction on social media.

3. Choo Choo! Here Comes the Nostalgia Train of Past Halloween Costumes!: Cute kids in costumes is reader gold!

2. 45 Things I'm Grateful for in My Life: My annual birthday post is always one of the most viewed pieces of the year. This is either proof that readers do love personal pieces that allow them to connect with the writer or people like to gloat that I'm getting old.

1. Halloween Never Dies! The Late Pictorial Exploration of the Spicer Halloween: Many readers got to discover what a big giant suck that I am, but also that I have adorable kids.

Highlight of November: These are pieces that did not make the top ten most viewed but I feel deserve some spotlight.

My 8 Favourite Magazines from My Childhood: Not the most profound piece ever, but nostalgia can be fun and I miss getting magazines in the mail.

A Quick Confession of a Creative Writer: Just remember that I tend to be the critic that is less annoyed by plot holes, and that may reflect how I write stories too. This was one of my few updates about my progress on my November novel.

50K!: My declaration that I hit the goal for my novel. I ended the month with 70k words.

November Movie Reviews:

'Ted Bundy: American Psycho' Review: An Awful Movie for an Awful Man: This was the lone new written movie review this month, and I'm ashamed of that fact. There were many great movies that deserved the spotlight, and I wish I never gave the attention or spent the time on this movie. But I did, so I had to make it worthwhile. There will be many more reviews in December, and some of them will be for good movies! 

The Movie Breakdown Episodes: There were two reruns this month, but I just included the brand new episodes.

The Breakdown of Horror: 'Wendell & Wild', 'The People Under the Stairs', 'Saw', and 'The Fury'

The Breakdown of the Modern State of Movies

The Breakdown of Enemy Mine

November Stats:

The month got 7635 views. Considering how much of the stuff was 'reruns', I am happy with those numbers for a site that always has modest numbers, but I have the desire and determination to grow.

Top referred sites: 1. Google 2. Facebook 3. Blogger 4. Twitter 5. Tumblr

Pageview by Browser: 1. Chrome 2. Safari 3. FireFox 4. Mobile 5. Internet Explorer

Pageviews by Operating System: 1. Linux (wha!?!) 2. Windows 3. Macintosh, 4. iPhone 5. Android (despite what many have told me about everyone reading things on their phone, the mobile devices were distant fourth and fifth.)

Top Keywords: 1. 'Chickenhare and the Hamster of Darkness', 2. 'Rodriguez and Beyond the Pelicula' (no idea that is, and pretty sure I never wrote about it, so searchers were disappointed), 3. 'Siskel & Ebert', 4. 'Beyond the Balcony' (you found us!) 5. Ava and Ali (again no idea, but hope the searchers found what they wanted.)

Top User Locations: 1. United States (five times more than any other country) 2. Germany 3. Canada 4. Russia, 5. Ireland

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Okay. That is the wrap-up for November. It was not the greatest month on the site, but I am still proud of what I wrote. The plan is to just keep getting better and better.

Thank you so much for reading, and your constant support. I am humbled there are so many people that check out Beyond the Balcony. Thank you!