"The notion that such persons are gay of heart and carefree is curiously untrue. They lead, as a matter of fact, an existence of jumpiness and apprehension. They sit on the edge of the chair of Literature. In the house of Life they have the feeling that they have never taken off their overcoats."
- James Thurber, My Life and Hard Times
Showing posts with label riding magazine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label riding magazine. Show all posts

Monday, February 23, 2009

Oh, what a tangled web we weave

It's funny how the same topic will be on so many people's minds. I had been thinking all week that as soon as I could, I wanted to blog about my website, and LJ Sellers' latest blog is about - drumroll, please - websites and blogs and whether you need both. Great minds...

In the beginning, I had a website. I got one because some expert somewhere told me I needed one if I was going to be taken seriously as a writer and get the word out about my wordsmithing prowess. Even though I'm a software engineer by training, I decided to go with a kind of 'plug-and-play' site builder because I didn't want to take the time away from my new career as a writer just to learn html. I used Yahoo's Small Business Web Hosting to pick a template and fill in the blanks. I named it www.gaylecarline.com. Genius, huh?

It took me a little while to get the content right, mostly due to the fact that I didn't know what I was doing. At the time, I was writing journalistic articles for Riding Magazine and humor columns for the Placentia News-Times. You could say I felt divided, and my website reflected it. Finally, I got it all sorted out, and added buttons to lead you to whatever half of my writing personality you wanted to hire. In an attempt to garner more interest in my humor, I also put some funny pictures with funny captions, to show people that I'm funny.

Fast forward to now: I'm being published! Freezer Burn will be out in September 2009, I have a story in Missing, which is now available, and I've started writing the second book of Peri's escapades. I still want to write my humor column. I no longer write my Riding column, but if my editor called and asked me to cover a show or interview a trainer, I'd do it in a heartbeat, just because they gave me my publishing start.

So what I'm asking is, what should my website look like now? Please take a look-see, if you've got the time and tell me: Where should I focus? What's working? What needs to go away?

Even if you don't want to give me specific suggestions for my site, how do you think your website reflects who you want people to think you are?
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