A fake reader lurking within my subconscious writes:

Dear Mr. Crossover,

Hello! How are you? I am fine. I have been using WordPress.com for four years. Please follow my blog and reblog all three of my posts so far, because I just Liked a random post you wrote last month without reading it and now you owe me. I have another question. I read your About page and it says you had three different posts on Freshly Pressed, which is a really big deal because it means WordPress likes you best. I think that’s really unfair and you didn’t deserve it and I want to know your secret. How can I be more like you and get Freshly Pressed so that I can become famous and everyone will like me and then I can write for Hollywood and make enough money to buy your website and set it on fire and run over the ashes in my new Humvee? Also, I nominated you for a Liebster Award and I will Follow you if you Follow me.

Sincerely,
N.V.S. Strawman
Exposition, WY
http://ripoffsweatshopfashions.wordpress.com

Dear Mr. Strawman,

I wish you hadn’t asked, but I can tell you what I’ve learned from the experiences that changed my life forever and made me Hero of the Internets. As you begin reading, prepare to rethink your entire existence piece by piece, until every second becomes retroactively spectacular from Day Zero onward.

The editors at WordPress.com keep their own counsel about what posts are or aren’t selected for prominent display in their Freshly Pressed showcase, which is viewed by thousands of WordPress users daily. For some aspiring creators it’s their first great opportunity to play for a large audience. It’s not uncommon for those chosen few to believe they’ve finally made it and it’s all wine and roses going forward forever.

I won’t lie: for as long as the attention lasts, it’s an encouraging ego boost.

One spot on Freshly Pressed can create quite the upswing and send your site soaring for a time. If lightning strikes twice, that’s a sign of talent, right? That it wasn’t just a fluke? That maybe you’re on to something with this whole writing indulgence? That maybe you really are truly, superbly awesome?

But Freshly Pressed three times? Can…this…BE? Isn’t this against the Terms of Service? How’s that work, then?

Maybe you think your chances of being Freshly Pressed would improve dramatically if you do any of the following:

* Become world-famous well before you lend your name to WordPress
* Have a signed publishing contract in place
* Earn a college degree
* Invest hours in creating a lovely, eye-catching site design, or at least a look that doesn’t mumble “factory presets”
* Are longtime friends with someone who works for WordPress or Automattic
* Know friends who can hack the Freshly Pressed software
* Possess incriminating blackmail photos of WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg publishing recipes on Tumblr

If you have one or more of those qualities in your favor, more power to you! I’m sure you’re on the road to Winnertown. I had none of these on my side. Not a one. Especially not the whole site-design thing. (Seriously, have you looked at the place? No one even gets the reference behind the “red skies” ambiance. At all.)

Barring advantages like those, that means it’s down to your actual posting content. How does one craft the kind of submission that’s a surefire Freshly Pressed pick? Is it humanly possible to write every post with that goal in mind, like those high-minded directors who won’t touch a screenplay unless it has “OSCAR GOLD” written across the cover page?

If you insist this Dulcinea must be yours, why not try one, two, or all of the following Secret Success Strategies to Freshly Pressed Giant-Size Hero-Time Magicality:

* Quit your day job and liquefy all your assets so you can afford to go Full Blogosphere sixty hours per week
* Sell out to a major corporation and become their content monkey
* Write about nothing but shiny happy cheery things
* Join an online pyramid scheme and network your way to Pyrrhic victory
* Take a photo of a tree; scribble a random Gandhi quote on it
* Minimum six F-words per entry
* Be really, really hot

Good luck with that, and congrats on your future greatness. Funny thing: I had none of these going for me, either. And I’m certain I’m not alone on that.

How does it work, then? Another WordPress cohort of mine, the indisputably talented Princess Rosebud over at Enchanted Seashells, started her shindig around the same time as mine. In an average week she now racks up three or four times as many Likes per entry as I do, elicits literally ten to twenty times as many comments per entry as MCC does, and — judging by her frequently impressive photos — lives in a palace whose fascinating interior design sense makes our prefab suburban shack look about as appealing as the White Room at Wolfram & Hart.

But she’s never been Freshly Pressed. Neither of us quite gets it.

All I can honestly tell you is what worked for me. Taking my three moments of fleeting satisfaction in order:

* “The Day an Empty Chair Ruled the Internet” — WordPress editors like scouting for thoughts on current events. When Clint Eastwood took on the legendary “Obamachair” in mentally unarmed combat, all social media stopped and stared. I, dismissive of politics in general and political parties in particular, registered my apathetic incredulity at all the attention being showered upon this head-shaking debacle instead of on decent American artists like myself. From the outside and out of context, what I wrote apparently sounded objective and informed, just the right approach for an all-purpose summation. I was disinclined to dispute their findings.

* Midlife Crisis Crossover 2012 in Review, Assuming the Next Thirteen Days are a Complete Write-Off — This was a direct response to one of the Weekly Writing Challenges set forth each week by the Daily Post, the primary community clubhouse for all WordPress. Their writing prompts are a fun way for WordPress users to show off for each other, swap names, compare skill sets, and boost traffic a smidge. Sometimes a few responses to those prompts earn a Freshly Pressed merit badge. When they dared us to create our own year-end site reports for 2012, I dove into mine with exhaustive gusto. In my mind, such a project should involve both stats and lists. How I could I not give it 115%?

* The Last Stand of the Drive-In Theater: Upgrade or Perish — WordPress encourages users to consider submitting entries in certain specialty categories. One of those is “wplongform”, a tag reserved for posts of considerable length — say, 1500 to 2000 words or more, miles beyond the “TL;DR” safety barrier. One day I felt inspired to fuse my thoughts about a current-events entertainment topic (how the obsolescence of celluloid film may be pushing America’s last few drive-in theaters out of business) with my own early memories of childhood moviegoing. What felt like 500 words in my head transformed into an 1800-word behemoth. Almost as an afterthought I slapped the “wplongform” tag on it before publishing, not an uncommon habit of mine since I have ongoing verbosity issues. It’s my understanding that’s how the editors ran across it.

In sum: three different posts, three different Freshly Pressed circumstances. No discernible commonalities, no pointers toward a surefire formula, not even so much as a desperate “FOR YOUR FRESHLY PRESSED CONSIDERATION” banner sprawled across the top of any of them. Far as I know, not a single WordPress employee counts themselves among my Followers.

Bottom line, Mr. Strawman: when it comes to being Freshly Pressed…it just depends.

I realize how not-helpful that is. This is why I’m not a paid professional advice columnist, though sometimes I can play one on the Internet when the mood strikes.

Keep in mind, though, as I hinted briefly above: the Freshly Pressed euphoria is largely temporary. Former FP winners have injured themselves trying to sustain the momentum that fizzled out after the next winners usurped their spotlight. A few of us even shared our experiences on a site called Freshly DePressed so that the generations who followed in our footsteps might learn from the post-fame depression that consumed us when our traffic levels went back to normal and our fair-weather fans collectively stopped approving everything we did. This support group has been dormant of late, but could always use more members. Line forms to the right.

As any WordPress editors and most users will tell you, theoretically you should be writing what you feel compelled to write, not what you think you have to write to gain the approval of others. If others notice, cool. If many others notice, even cooler. But there are greater reasons to pursue and loftier goals to achieve than that singular brass ring that means very, very little outside the WordPress community. I have a small but mighty contingent of readers who are not WordPress users, who couldn’t care less about such a thing, and who tend to skip any and all meta-entries on the subject. I tend to hear from them more about the other things I write. Of all my motivations behind this site’s existence, they’re among my favorites.

If you could glean any one thing from me today, let it be this above all else:

WordPress is not the world.

Thanks for reading,
Randy Golden
Midlife Crisis Crossover

(P.S.: Reading the complete text of “So You Want to Be a Super Awesome ‘Freshly Pressed’ All-Star” constitutes full seminar participation and consent to purchase without right of refund or exchange. Anyone who made it this far now owes me one bajillion dollars for services rendered. Checks should be made payable to Three-Time Freshly Pressed Award Winner Randall A. Golden. No IOUs or livestock trade offers, please.)