web site housekeeping day

Okay, it's a kind of foofing about, but it's something that would have to be done anyway, so I did it. My main site www.wendywootton.co.uk has needed some minor updating for a while, so as I just can't get into writing, and I needed to avoid my proofchecking, I thought it would be more useful to update my site rather than spend the day cruising MySpace making new friends.

There are no great design changes. It was mainly adding info about Sex in Public, and posting links to a few reviews, and updating all the blog links to point here instead of the old place. The review bit was actually very cheering. In total, there seem to be quite a few of them now, and when folk say nice things about my writing, it fair bucks me up! It was all very time consuming work, though, and fiddly here and there, but thank heavens for Dreamweaver that can do global changes for things like the blog link.

One of these days, I suppose I should do a makeover of both my Wendy site and my Portia site, but I'm having enough trouble applying myself to writing as it is... In fact, I know it sounds silly when I design myself, but I'm almost tempted to get someone else to makeover my site for me. I was reading on a romance writers' message board only yesterday how important it was to have a high impact site if you really want to make an impression, and I know the poster was right... But I've always resisted anything that looks too self conscious, as I don't want to look like a product or a brand... I just want to project a very personal sense of 'me' with my site. Not me as the big time writer [like, yeah...] but me as a the real, living person... And if I should go for a new design, by someone else, one of these days... there's one thing I will not embrace, no way, not in this freaking universe... and that's referring to myself in the third person on my site!!!!! I mean, how pretentious is that? I'm not the Queen, for God's sake! When I encounter a 'third person' site, even if I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the author is the sweetest, most unassuming and most genuine person you could possibly imagine, there's this subconscious muttering gnome of curmudgeonliness inside me going 'get her, the snobby cow!'

I have heard people say that the 'third person' approach makes people think that you're much more successful ie. it implies that there's a whole team of people looking after business for you... But I think the shrewd site visitor can always tell what stage the author's career is at from the amount of books listed, their type or genre, and their publishers - and from that deduce that there is no mighty machine behind her or him. LOL!

Yikes, I don't know what brought that little tirade on! Just felt like a bit of a whinge about one of the many minor niggles that get on my wick from time to time...