Writers in the Storm

Sierra Godfrey

It would be nice if we all had a virtual set of Tupperware that allowed us to take out nice fresh pieces of our websites or blogs when things get stale. Let’s face it—even if your website or blog is professionally designed or a straight-off-the-shelf template, and whether you’re promoting a book or just building an audience or community, we all have the same problem after a while.

Websites get stale.

For as long as I’ve been involved with designing or creating websites, it’s always come as an unpleasant surprise to clients that they actually have to put some work into running a site after it’s designed. The web moves fast and you need to adapt to keep your site interesting and visitors coming back. If you’re promoting books, then you need to count your website as an important part of your overall publicity—whether or not you can see the results of people visiting.

Here are seven tips for keeping it real:

1. Make sure your site is up to date with your work. There’s nothing worse than a website that looks like a ghost town. You know, tumble weeds flitting by on your About page. A blog with broken, swinging saloon doors that hasn’t been updated in two years. A cobwebby book page that still says “Stay tuned for the new release, coming October 2009!” Go through and clean it up, sweep away the dust, and get the most current book information on your site, front and center. If you aren’t yet published and aren’t promoting a book, keep your blog front and center.

2. Consider removing features that force you to update too often. Examples include a “What’s new” section that almost every new visitor to your site will click. If your latest news has been “Welcome to my site, I just updated my site from Geocities!” for six years, then it’s a no-go.

3. Look at other author sites. What are other authors doing? How are they presenting their news? How active do their sites look? Are people adding excerpts, recipes, and character sheets with their books? How about digital autograph tools? Playlists?

4. If you do decide to redesign, beware of current fads. It’s tempting to look “techy” with a parallax style website. Parallax is a wide-screen format with vertical scrolling, and it’s the current trend with high tech companies. Parallax can be great for mobile users with websites that tell a story but in most cases, author sites don’t tell stories, you sell them. I hate to see people using parallax because it looks cool in lieu of actual content. By the way, if your reading audience is a bunch of teenage girls, then you might consider updating your site to be more mobile-friendly. There are several ways to do this that are beyond this post, but you can definitely Google that.

A parallax example

5. Update your look to your latest book. It’s great to have a site that looks just like your book cover, like using a background that matches the cover. I’ve worked with several authors on their websites who wanted sites to match the tone of their first release. Inevitably, they write more books! I’m thrilled for them, but then their site needs updating. I always advise sticking with a neutral theme that matches your personality and preferred writing genre. That way you don’t get stuck with the look of your first book.

6. Check your site stats. You should have a basic site statistics tool installed. Google Analytics works with pretty much everything including Wordpress, and I also like the Jetpack site stats tool for Wordpress because it’s easy to use. If people are visiting one section of your site in particular, consider expanding that section to offer more. Rewrite the content, add more pictures. And then consider combining the unused section of your site or deleting it altogether.

7. Finally, kill your darlings. Oh sure, we know this one as it applies to writing, right? But if you’re dead set against changing your menu graphics because you like the way they are, but they no longer serve the right purpose (reminder: that purpose is to get people to read your site content!), then change it! I recently spoke to a friend who knew her links were confusing but she liked how they looked. If she wanted to move forward with the site update, she would have to let go of her darlings.

What about you? What ways have you found to keep your site fresh? Is this is something you’ve heard about before, but haven’t addressed? I’d love to see your websites—put them in with your comment!

About Sierra

Sierra writes fiction that features strong heroines who grow from the challenges they face (and there’s usually a guy involved; you know how that is) A graphic designer by day, she lives in the foggy wastelands of the San Francisco Bay Area with her family. She is a member of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association and a grateful quarterly contributor to the Writers in the Storm. Her non-fiction essays have been featured on Maria Shriver’s Shriver Report and Architects of Change website, and in the anthology, Nothing But The Truth So Help Me God: 73 Women on Life’s Transitions.

You can find more of her sass at www.sierragodfrey.com and she’s pretty mouthy on Twitter (@sierragodfrey), too. Come talk to her, she loves it.

 

 

 

Kathryn Craft
Turning Whine into Gold

In our ongoing look at what wisdom Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements can offer writers, we come to agreement number three.

[Click here for Agreement 1 and Agreement 2.]

Don’t Make Assumptions
Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

“Communicate with others as clearly as you can”—as writers, you’d think we have this one in the bag. We are all about communication! Yet as fiction writers we do so indirectly, while balancing character development, plot advancement, setting, word craft, metaphor, and more. And that’s just the fiction, let alone the clarity of the emails you’re trying to answer and the tweets you’re trying to push out and blog posts that need tending and the gigs you’re trying to line up.

Is it any wonder we sometimes fail to contextualize our comments, or express our needs, or ask all the right questions?

Yet a career is built of relationships that require clear communication. Let me count the whines that the simple act of asking questions could resolve:

Rather than whine: My critique partner gives me all the wrong feedback.

Ask: Don’t worry about correcting my grammar, could you just give me notes on how the story is adding up in your mind?

Rather than whine: My career has stalled for eight months. I don’t know what’s going on with my submission.

Ask: Hi [agent], sorry to be out of touch so long. Could you give me an update on my submission status?

Rather than whine: I don’t understand my contract but I don’t want to look dumb.

Ask: I don’t understand this rights clause. You’re the expert—could you explain it to me before I sign?

Rather than whine: My book isn’t ready but I’m afraid to tell my editor because I might never get another contract.

Ask: I am so closed to finished and want to give you the very best possible product. Is there any wiggle room in my deadline?

Rather than whine: This is my first speaking engagement and I’m not sure what they want me to talk about.

Ask: Could you tell me more about your group and its recent talks so I can give them something they’ll really like?

Rather than whine: I need more support at home but my husband simply refuses to read my mind.

Ask: I’m writing on deadline and really feeling the pinch. Could you cover dinners this week?

Pretty sure you see where I’m going with this:

JUST ASK.

An overstressed writer can, amazingly, sometimes be a poor communicator. It happens.

But here is something else a writer always is, no matter how stressed: an inquisitive being who is not only capable of learning, she feeds on it. Honor that instinct, and ask for what you need. You might be surprised at how well it works.

What assumptions have you made in your writing life that did not necessarily serve you well?

About Kathryn

Kathryn Craft is the author of two novels from Sourcebooks: The Art of Falling, and The Far End of Happy, due May 2015.

Her work as a developmental editor at Writing-Partner.com, specializing in storytelling structure and writing craft, follows a nineteen-year career as a dance critic. Long a leader in the southeastern Pennsylvania writing scene, she now serves as book club liaison for the Women’s Fiction Writers Association. She hosts lakeside writing retreats for women in northern New York State, leads workshops, and speaks often about writing.

Kathryn lives with her husband in Bucks County, PA. Although a member of The Liars Club, she swears that everything in this bio is true.

Website: http://www.kathryncraft.com/

What's the time management secret that's sure to help us all get TONS more writing done? "Yes makes less." It's my new favorite motto.

If you've never heard of Steven Pressfield or Shawn Coyne, you're missing out on some amazing lessons. Pressfield wrote The War of Art (edited by Coyne) and they often blog about creativity.

In Why and How Creative People Say No, they referenced a post by Kevin Ashton.

Fascinating stuff!

The part that resonated with me the most:

Time is the raw material of creation.

Wipe away the magic and myth of creating and all that remains is work: the work of becoming expert through study and practice, the work of finding solutions to problems and problems with those solutions, the work of trial and error, the work of thinking and perfecting, the work of creating.

Creating consumes. It is all day, every day. It knows neither weekends nor vacations. It is not when we feel like it. It is habit, compulsion, obsession, vocation.

The common thread that links creators is how they spend their time. No matter what you read, no matter what they claim, nearly all creators spend nearly all their time on the work of creation. There are few overnight successes and many up-all-night successes.

Saying “no” has more creative power than ideas, insights and talent combined. No guards time, the thread from which we weave our creations. The math of time is simple: you have less than you think and need more than you know.

We are not taught to say “no.” We are taught not to say “no.” “No” is rude. “No” is a rebuff, a rebuttal, a minor act of verbal violence. “No” is for drugs and strangers with candy.

Creators do not ask how much time something takes but how much creation it costs. This interview, this letter, this trip to the movies, this dinner with friends, this party, this last day of summer. How much less will I create unless I say “no?” A sketch? A stanza? A paragraph? An experiment? Twenty lines of code?

The answer is always the same: “yes” makes less.

We do not have enough time as it is. There are groceries to buy, gas tanks to fill, families to love and day jobs to do.

~~~~~

Amen to that! I've put my "new favorite motto" on a big pink index card next to my computer, and taped another one to my bathroom mirror. (I'd love to hear where you put up your motivational quotes.)

Are you a "YES" person, a "NO" person, or somewhere in between? What helps you guard your creative time? Do you have any time management secrets to share??

 

Bonus: Laura Drake wrote a doozy of a post called Can’t We All Just Get Along? over at More Cowbell about some of the wild behavior happening online lately. I guarantee you, it’s worth your time. :-)

About Jenny

By day, Jenny provides training and social media marketing for an accounting firm. By night she writes humor, memoir, women’s fiction and short stories. After 15 years as a corporate software trainer, she’s delighted to sit down while she works.

When she’s not at her personal blog, More Cowbell, Jenny can be found on Twitter at JennyHansenCA or at Writers In The Storm. Jenny also writes the Risky Baby Business posts at More Cowbell, a series that focuses on babies, new parents and high-risk pregnancy.