Author's Website: What to do with ...
I've been trying to decide what to do with my author's website. Whether to disassemble it and rebuild it somewhere else or abandon the idea of an author's website altogether. It's partly because I'm tired of the templates, but mostly because I don't have that much work to put on display. At this juncture, having an author's website only underscores how paltry my output has been.
Tonight I took another stab at website housekeeping. After much moving stuff around, copying links and text, then deleting, then reinserting, I had to admit that it was time to move my "old" novel off the front page of the site. I'd tried that earlier, of course, when I wrote the "Welcome" message (see below). However, I wasn't happy with the welcome message, so I decided to use the first page as a blog. (In addition to blogging here.) Writer's thoughts are probably only entertaining to writers. And since I don't expect anyone to read this (hardly anyone has visited this site in years), it's as good a place as any to be myself: to take a cue from the Purloined Letter so to speak and hide right out in the open.
I had a wonderful weekend, by the way. Went to visit Helen Pike in Eatontown and took part in a reading to celebrate the publication of her book Glory Days, which is about the glory days of Asbury Park. Seeing Helen was great. The woman has an incredibly infectious laugh and really knows how to lift my spirits.
It was Helen who was responsible for the small miracle that occurred. After months of being unable to write a coherent sentence, I was suddenly able to compose a short story on the day of the reading, starting at 8 in the morning and finishing it on the two-hour ride from Penn Station. Actually, I scribbled up to the very last minute, before she summoned me to the podiium. I was terrified, of course, but the audience was very kind and warmly receptive. What stuns me is that the story actually came together. Imagine. I suppose I'm one of those people who need to be put under pressure to achieve anything. The right kind of pressure, that is. At any rate, I came back yesterday, exhausted, tried today to write something and was back to square one: I couldn't come up with a coherent storyline to save my life. Oh well. It was nice to enjoy a bright moment of clarity before the fog of muddled thinking descended again.
Tonight I took another stab at website housekeeping. After much moving stuff around, copying links and text, then deleting, then reinserting, I had to admit that it was time to move my "old" novel off the front page of the site. I'd tried that earlier, of course, when I wrote the "Welcome" message (see below). However, I wasn't happy with the welcome message, so I decided to use the first page as a blog. (In addition to blogging here.) Writer's thoughts are probably only entertaining to writers. And since I don't expect anyone to read this (hardly anyone has visited this site in years), it's as good a place as any to be myself: to take a cue from the Purloined Letter so to speak and hide right out in the open.
I had a wonderful weekend, by the way. Went to visit Helen Pike in Eatontown and took part in a reading to celebrate the publication of her book Glory Days, which is about the glory days of Asbury Park. Seeing Helen was great. The woman has an incredibly infectious laugh and really knows how to lift my spirits.
It was Helen who was responsible for the small miracle that occurred. After months of being unable to write a coherent sentence, I was suddenly able to compose a short story on the day of the reading, starting at 8 in the morning and finishing it on the two-hour ride from Penn Station. Actually, I scribbled up to the very last minute, before she summoned me to the podiium. I was terrified, of course, but the audience was very kind and warmly receptive. What stuns me is that the story actually came together. Imagine. I suppose I'm one of those people who need to be put under pressure to achieve anything. The right kind of pressure, that is. At any rate, I came back yesterday, exhausted, tried today to write something and was back to square one: I couldn't come up with a coherent storyline to save my life. Oh well. It was nice to enjoy a bright moment of clarity before the fog of muddled thinking descended again.
0 comments:
Post a Comment