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Month: June 2023

Writing Progress Report – Second Quarter 2023

Progress Report –Second Quarter 2023

How was second quarter 2023 for writing? So, I spent second quarter 2023 writing a number of short stories from one-word prompts.

Second Quarter 2023 Posted Works

First of all, I worked on a number of new short stories. A lot of these had been drafted on paper and so I spent some time editing them.

Then on Wattpad I posted on the WattNaNo profile and the Star Trek Fans profile, and nowhere else.

Milestones

Also, I have written over 3.45 million words (fan fiction and wholly original fiction combined). So right now my stats on Wattpad for wholly original works are as follows:

  • Dinosaurs – 42+ reads, 11+ comments
  • How to NaNoWriMo – 26,027+ reads, 340+ comments
  • My Favorite Things (like kibble) – 983 reads, 133 comments
  • Revved Up – 59,452+ reads, 531+ comments
  • Side By Side – 20 reads, 2 comments
  • Social Media Guide for Wattpad – 15,953+ reads, 592+ comments
  • The Canadian Caper – 506 reads, 37 comments
  • The Dish – 250 reads, 24 comments
  • There is a Road – 189 reads, 28 comments
  • WattNaNo’s Top Picks 2018 – 1,975+ reads, 45+ comments
  • WattNaNo’s Top Picks 2019 – 1,848+ reads, 10+ comments
  • What Now? – 2,812+ reads, 104+ comments

More Published Works as of Second Quarter 2023

Also, I am amassing quite the collection of published works!

Untrustworthy, which is my first published novel. So yay!

A True Believer in Skepticism, published in Mythic Magazine.

Almost Shipwrecked, a story in the January 2019 edition of Empyreome.

Canaries, a short story in the March 29, 2019, edition of Theme of Absence.

Complications, a story in the Queer Sci Fi Discovery anthology. So this is an anthology where the proceeds went to supporting the QSF website.

Cynthia and Wilder Bloom, stories in the Longest Night Watch II anthology.

Props, a story in the Longest Night Watch I anthology. So this is an anthology where the proceeds go to Alzheimer’s research.

Surprises, a story in Book One of the 42 and Beyond Anthology set.

The Boy in the Band, a story in the Pride Park anthology. So this is an anthology where the proceeds go to the Trevor Project.

The Interview, the featured story in the December 14, 2018 edition of Theme of Absence. So they even interviewed me!

The Last Patient, a story in the Stardust, Always anthology. This was an anthology where the proceeds go to cancer research.

The Resurrection of Ditte, a story in the Unrealpolitik anthology.

This is My Child, a short story published in the April 8, 2019 edition of Asymmetry Fiction.

Three Minutes Back in Time, a short story published in Mythic Magazine.

Killing Us Softly, a short story published in Corner Bar Magazine.

Darkness into Light, a short story published in Corner Bar Magazine.

WIP Corner

So my current WIPs are as follows:

The Obolonk Murders Trilogy – so this one is all about a tripartite society. But who’s killing the aliens?

The Enigman Cave – can we find life on another planet and not screw it up? You know, like we do everything else?

The Real Hub of the Universe Trilogy – so the aliens who live among us in the 1870s and 1880s are at war. But why is that?

Mettle – so it’s all about how society goes to hell in a hand basket when the metals of the periodic table start to disappear. But then what?

Time Addicts – No One is Safe – so this one is all about what happens in the future when time travel becomes possible via narcotic.

Time Addicts – Nothing is Permanent – this is the second in this trilogy. What happens when time is tampered with and manipulated in all sorts of ways? It’s the ultimate in gaslighting, for one thing.

Time Addicts – Everything is Up For Grabs – as the timelines smack together and continue to diverge, it gets harder to tell the “real” timeline from all the newer fake ones. And what if some of the changes are for the better?

Prep Work

So currently, my intention, for next year’s NaNoWriMo, is to write the third trilogy in the Time Addicts/Obolonks universe. But I need to iron out the plot! So a lot of this year has been spent on that. I have no name for this one yet.

For 2022 NaNoWriMo, I have decided to create a prequel for each of the 5 main universes: Real Hub of the Universe, Obolonks, Time Addicts (while the Obolonks and Time Addicts are in the same universe, I just plain want to write two separate prequels!), Untrustworthy, The Enigman Cave, and Mettle.

So, I anticipate a lot of fun and perhaps a little confusion. But it’s all good!

Second Quarter 2023 Queries and Submissions

So here’s how that’s been going during Second Quarter 2023.

It’s been quiet. But that has been by design. Right now, I just plain don’t feel like putting myself out there these days. There, I said it.

In Progress

As of Second Quarter 2023, the following are still in the running for publishing:

This list is the name of the story and then the name of the potential publisher.

  • I Used to Be Happy – Gemini Magazine
  • Justice – Adbusters
  • Mettle – RAB
  • Soul Rentals ‘R’ Us – A Thousand One Stories
  • Who Do We Blame for This? – Sonder Review

All Other Statuses

So be sure to see the Stats section for some details on any query statuses for Second Quarter 2023 which were not in progress.

Stats

So in 2018, my querying stats were:

  • 68 submissions of 19 stories
  • Acceptances: 4, 5.88%
  • In Progress-Under Consideration: 3, 4.41% (so these don’t seem to have panned out)
  • In Progress: 10, 14.71%
  • Rejected-Personal: 14, 20.59%
  • Rejected-Form: 24, 35.29%
  • Ghosted: 13 (so these were submissions where I never found out what happened), 19.12%

So in 2019 my querying stats were:

  • 23 submissions of 11 stories (so 6 submissions carry over from 2018)
  • Acceptances: 4, 17.39%
  • In Progress: 11 (so this includes 2 holdovers from 2018), 47.83%
  • Rejected-Personal: 4, 17.39%
  • Rejected-Form: 3, 13.04%
  • Ghosted: 1 (so these are submissions where I never found out what happened), 4.35%

2020 Stats

So in 2020 my querying stats were:

  • 37 submissions of 12 stories (so 9 submissions carried over from 2019)
  • Acceptances: 3, 8.11%
  • In Progress: 7, 18.92%
  • Rejected-Personal: 12, 32.43%
  • Rejected-Form: 4, 10.81%
  • Ghosted: 11 (so these are submissions where I never found out what happened), 29.73%

2021 Stats

So in 2021 my querying stats were 5 submissions of 5+ stories (so 5 submissions carried over from 2020), all ghosted, 100%.

2022 Stats

So in 2022 my querying stats were:

  • 6+ submissions of 65+ stories (so 5 submissions carry over from 2020 and 2021), plus 1 reprint!
  • Acceptances: 14.29%
  • Rejected-Form: 1, 14.29%
  • Ghosted: 5 (so these are submissions where I never found out what happened), 71.42%

It can be pretty discouraging and hard to go on when nothing new comes up which is positive. You can essentially consider 2023 to be more of the same.

Second Quarter 2023 – Productivity Killers

So it’s work, what else? And Second Quarter 2023 will not be the end of that!

I am also dealing with the aftermath of my mother’s death on February 19, 2023. Just when you think it’s not going to hit you, well, of course it does. Of course.

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Self-Review – Fatima’s Minnesota Wish

Review – Fatima’s Minnesota Wish

In 2021, I tried to write or at least start one short story per day. Fatima’s Minnesota Wish came from a single-word prompt: carousel.

Background for this Minnesota Wish

Fatima’s sister Aaliyah is dying. Their parents have brought their children to the Mayo Clinic, in the hopes that somewhere, somehow, there can be a miracle and there will be a suitable donor. But time is running out.

For Fatima, who is in the seventh grade, school is a mystery. She is learning English on the fly, but at least she understands math, for the numbers are the same. In order to help her acclimate better (and faster), the school offers the services of its speech therapist for some individualized instruction.

Into this difficult and sometimes bewildering world comes an expression from the speech therapist, Miss Crane.

Go for the brass ring.

The first part of the story is Fatima figuring out just what that is, and hoping against all hope that it will be the one thing that saves her dying baby sister.

Plot

It’s all the Hussein family can do to try to keep their younger daughter alive. But every day, that gets harder and harder. Fatima, their elder daughter, is just trying to navigate life.

Fatima’s own grief and sadness are spiked with a dose of the novelty of being in the United States and learning English. And maybe talking about boys with her new friends. But then there’s that brass ring, and all it symbolizes.

Characters

The characters are mainly Fatima, her parents, Ali and Maryam, her sister, Aaliyah. At school, Fatima’s teacher is Mrs. Murphy. Her speech teacher, helping Fatima learn English, is Miss Crane.

At the hospital are Mr. and Dr. DePels and their daughter, Doris, along with Dr. Rosenthal. Also, there are Shmuly Baum’s parents, Herschel and Raya.

Memorable Quotes

Months went by, and of course Mrs. Murphy was right about the Minnesota winter. But it was only my parents and me who ever saw it. Aaliyah stayed in the hospital, month after month.

In the meantime, I was making friends with some girls: Nicole and Debbie. My father went to work at an engineering firm whenever he could. He would switch off with my mother, who would work in architecture, from home. But I could see how worried she was. It was hard for her to be creative. I suppose that’s understandable.

When May rolled around, the lovely weather got us all itching to go outside. Miss Crane used a rather odd expression with me. She said I should “reach for the brass ring”.

Rather than ask her what she meant, I decided to figure it out for myself. I just asked her for a hint, and she told me to go to a local park, to the carousel. She had to show me a picture, as I had never seen one before.

The park was open that weekend, and so I, in my halting English, asked the man running the carousel what the brass ring was. So, he showed me. There are rings in the center and, as your ride goes up and down and around, you lean over and reach out to try to grab one. And he said I could get any prize if I brought him one.

Rating

The story has a K rating.

Upshot for Fatima’s Minnesota Wish

I like the idea of this story probably more than how it actually came out. In part, this may be because it does not quite end. Rather, it just sort of runs out of gas. Which can happen with stories, naturally. Perhaps I will try to pick it up again in the future, particularly if it becomes a story to query or to self-publish.

Fatima’s Minnesota wish — maybe one day medicine will be able to grant it. #amwriting


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Is There Really a Writers’ Blog Community?

Background – Writers’ Blog Community

Do you mean to say there’s an actual writers blog community?

Well, there kind of is. People like me blog all the time. And there are other writers who blog less often but I should be including them. Even if they don’t truly keep to a blogging schedule or anything like that.

However, the real issue is, there isn’t a whole helluva lot of connection.

Islands in the Stream…♪♫

With all the apologies to Dolly Parton and the late Kenny Rogers, the truth is that any sort of a blog community for writers is horribly fractured. Hell, the term community is a bit of a misnomer in this area.

Now, it is possible to find something resembling such a community. In fact, there are a few decent communities for writers, and NaNoWriMo is one of them.

There are also offline groups, such as with MeetUp, but that doesn’t really solve the blogging issue, now, does it?

So, one of the things that has surprised me the most while doing research about this is that so few writers actually blog about writing. And I am not even so sure that they blog about anything. Which is a pity, and feels kind of weird.

There are also instructional blogs about writing. With the exception of Chuck Wendig, the links on that list are either educational or semi-promotional. And while Mr. Wendig is somewhat promotional, at least he does not make it the focus of his blogging. No one should. Because let’s face it, no one wants to read one long infomercial about your books.

Yes, even your books.

The Writer’s Journey, in Blog Form

Apart from, well, Adventures in Career Changing (that’s here, of course), I cannot seem to find something like that. You know, where the blogger covers a lot more of the journey from wannabe to frustrated writer to querying to acceptance to publication. Or maybe not to querying, but instead to going the indie route and self-publishing.

But that specific journey or at least meandering line doesn’t get coverage in the blogosphere. Or if it does, then hell if I know where it is.

It is somewhat easy to find help and I even offer some as I can. But there don’t seem to be a lot of blogs out there on the sheer process of querying. And the process of creating, for that matter.

How many bloggers look at their own stories with a critical eye? How many share their disappointments? And how many writing blogs cover connections among stories?

But you can always find blogs about outlining, or finding an agent, or setting up indie publishing.

Where Are You?

Excuse me. Where the hell are you???

Is there anybody else out there who is doing what I am doing? If you’re out there, you are making it rather difficult for someone like me to find you! Which means you just might want to rethink your SEO strategy.

Seriously.

And I swear, I want to find these folks. It’s not that I don’t want to learn even more about the writing business and self-publishing. Of course I do! But I also think that niche is covered extremely well already.  My niche is different.

I would also put Dayton Ward into the category of writer journey blogger. But only kinda, sorta, as he also writes a lot about fandom. Not to say that I never meander.

Still, I just plain cannot believe that it’s just him and me. Seriously folks? That’s crazy if it’s just … us.

I have a lot of trouble believing the entire world of writer journey bloggers can fit in the back seat of my (rather small) car.

Starting a Community

Maybe it’s up to me (or maybe Dayton and me, I dunno) to start one. And maybe it’s not meant to be. But I do not give up that easily. And, I think it could be helpful. If absolutely nothing else, then it can be Commiseration City. Population: all of us.

I cannot possibly be the only person wondering why such a thing does not, seemingly, exist.

Er, can I?

Blog Community Takeaways

I first set off looking for a community of bloggers. And I found a lot of instructions and not much else. For my fellow writers in the trenches, I hope we can start to find each other. We probably already know one another one places like Facebook or Bluesky. But what about the blogosphere? Why aren’t there more folks here?

Writing can be an extremely isolating thing to do. A voice calls out in the darkness. Is there anyone to hear it?

Maybe… you?

Maybe we could all just create a writers blog community… together. #amblogging #amwriting


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Easter Eggs

Let’s Look at Easter Eggs in My Writing

Ah, Easter eggs. Those fun little nuggets of connection between stories.

What and how do utterly unrelated items have in common? And how does a sly wink at the reader keep the sense of disbelief from crashing down?

Well, it doesn’t always.

Easter Eggs: A Fun Nod to the Reader

This is the way I have always looked at these.

If I can have a little fun, then I hope that you can as well.

And the best part is, this not something I came up with on my own. These have a proud and long tradition in writing. So, I am far from being the first ever person to do this.

What They Are

For me, the concept behind Easter eggs is to add a little dash of something which is in hiding and hard for some to know.

I see it as almost like, if you have been paying attention, then you will see this and this, here and here.

What They Aren’t

Except for the linking between the various trilogies in the Obolonk universe, these are just meant to be a bit of fun. As such, I do not mean for everyone named Shapiro to be related to everyone else. They aren’t.

Also, not every reference to Boston is right next door to any of the other references. And not every hint actually, well, goes anywhere.

In addition, a matching genre does not constitute one of these. After all, both Stranger in a Strange Land and any Star Trek tie-in novels are all under the science fiction umbrella. But that does not mean they tie together with each other.

And so in the same way, consider that the numerous Boston or Shapiro references do not always signify a connection.

It’s more that I like to throw them in and then see if the reader gets it.

And you, dear reader, I am quite sure that you do.

I Really Should Call Them Afikomens

I am, after all, Jewish. Eh, you know what I’m talking about. I suppose either can and will do.

Easter Eggs (or afikomen) are just my way of saying “hi” to the reader. So, hi!


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How to Create a Writer Website: Writer Website Speed and More UX Design

As writers, we might not be thinking too much about website speed. But the truth of the matter is, we are all going to have to. But why?

Website Speed and You

Let’s get into the weeds just a little bit, all right?

Suppose you are looking at two separate websites. One is blazing fast, or at least it’s fast enough that you do not notice the pages loading or anything like that.  But the other one? Not so much.

All other things being equal, you are highly likely to hang around the faster site. In fact, you may even believe it’s better than the other one. Why? Because your experience is markedly better there.

Now let’s assume that the slow site is better. Maybe the content is better written, or the writers have more authority. Or the site just might be prettier.

If you could ever see it, that is.

The Wonderful World of the First Contentful Paint

Er, come again? The term ‘first contentful paint‘ merely refers to the first moment when a visitor can see anything on a screen on your site. It’s measured in, I kid you not, tiny fractions of seconds.

Yep, sports fans, the human race’s collective attention span is just plain that short these days.

Think of how quickly you scroll through notifications or click from one record to another. Do you play any video games on your phone or otherwise online? Then you’re probably moving quickly there as well.

But what, pray tell, does this have to do with the design of your writer website. After all, the people who are visiting are just interested in your stellar prose, right?

Uh, if you believe that, then I have an awesome deal on a bridge to sell you.

The Visual World

We are living in an intensely visual world these days. Add that to how fast everything moves, and you’ve got a recipe for flashing everything. Or so it may seem.

Website speed generally comes down to images. How fast do they load? And woe be unto you if yours load slowly.

What are the Worst Website Speed Issues Out There?

It all has to do with images. But more specifically, it has to do with how your site performs on mobile. While you may experience the internet on a desktop or laptop, most people aren’t. At least, not outside of work. Rather, they are experiencing your site (and everyone else’s site, from here to Pinterest or wherever and beyond) on tablets or phones.

In fact, there are a lot of people who don’t own a PC at all. They might just have a phone. Think that’s rare? Think again — it’s practically a way of life in a lot of Asia.

So, your site has got to perform well on mobile devices. And, since they are often less flexible than bigger devices, everything starts to slow down when you view it on a phone.

But the good news is that you can fix this stuff!

Fix Your Website Speed Issues

There are probably more ways to fix speed issues, but these three will help you quickly.

Your Theme is Sluggish

Some WordPress themes are great! They’re nimble, they look good on mobile, and they don’t sludge up your site with unnecessary code.

Others, not so much.

One of the reasons why a site is slow is because of far too much extra HTML and other code (e.g. JavaScript). If your site is slow, then do yourself a favor and seriously consider a lighter theme. Just Google (or check within WordPress itself) for a theme that’s light or fast. I’ve seen both terms used.

Often, your site doesn’t even have to change too radically. After all, you already have your content (or maybe you haven’t started with content, but it’s on your radar). Knowing that, say, you want a wide background image and a centered logo means you know what to look for when you’re browsing for a new theme.

This theme, by the way, is often free. You shouldn’t have to pay simply for someone to not lard up a theme with excessive code.

Your Images are too Large

This is so fixable it’s not funny! There are two ways to approach this. Use both of them.

As Pogo (satirizing Commandant Oliver Perry) said, “We have met the enemy, and it is us.”

If your images are too large, then shrink them either or both of these ways.

Crop What You’re Going to Crop, and Resize What You’re Going to Resize, Before Uploading an Image

WordPress will crop images for you. But the problem with that is, you end up with two versions—both cropped and uncropped. If you only want the one version, then do your cropping before you upload!

Same goes for resizing. If you have, say, a 1000 x 750 image and you really only want it to be 500 x 375, then, again, do your resizing offsite.

Compress Your Images Before Uploading Them

Now, there are plugins which will crunch your images. But CompressJPG does a fine job and it takes up no space on your site. Also, CompressJPG is utterly free, whereas compression plugins have limits.

Compressing does not hurt clarity and it doesn’t resize anything; it just makes the images fewer MB or KB than they were.

If you crop, resize, and compress your images, it will make a difference.

You Have Pages With Low Text to HTML Ratios

Er, what?

Text to HTML ratio means that you have a certain number of characters devoted to content, and a certain other number of characters devoted to all the HTML used to render those characters and also prettify your site.

SiteGuru has an excellent free (and it seems to be unlimited!) tester. Just pop in the URL you want to check, and click the button that says Test. A ratio of 20% content versus 80% HTML is good. Anything below that for content is not so good.

How do you fix this? Either remove HTML (which is what you do when you use a lighter theme) or write more verbal content or both. In particular, if you have an image anywhere but the featured image, it’s going to use HTML to render. Taking out that image will help your ratio.

Now, I don’t want you to have a boring, flat site. But at the same time, if the image is superfluous, then nix it. And, of course, do the above—crop, compress, and resize—if you really want to keep it.

Oh, Yeah, There’s a Fourth Way to Easily Improve Website Speed: Don’t Get All Plug-In Happy

Plugins add HTML. Some of them even add HTML to every single page, even if you can’t really see them or what they are supposed to be doing. Think about what you need, and determine if you can get away with less. And, just like with WordPress themes, look for plugins that are lighter and/or faster.

There’s more than one plugin for creating a newsletter, for example. If they are all more or less fulfilling your needs, then pick the one which gets the job done with the least amount of HTML.

Takeaways

Check site website speed regularly, and check HTML ratios as well. Both will help you to not only speed up your site but write better and go into more depth.

Congratulations! You’re now creating, designing, adding to, and using your site in a way that is designed to best serve the most important person of all—you your ideal customer.


Want More of Writer Website Development?

If my post on website speed resonates with you, then be sure to check out my other articles about how to create a writer website.

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Fix your site speed and get going the smart way! #amwriting

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How to Create a Writer Website: Writer Website User Experience Design

Whether you’re just starting or are updating an older author website, writer website user experience design is something you must consider.

Fer realz, yo’.

How Writer Website User Experience Design Can Help or Hurt You

Do yourself an enormous favor, and Google the placement office at your alma mater. If you didn’t go to college, then any local college or university will do. The name might be something like career development.

I am a ridiculous overachiever and have the oddest resume you are ever going to see. So, I have three alma maters, heh. Let’s look at them in turn (but what does this have to do with writer website design, I hear you cry. Trust me, you’ll see).

Boston University

The BU Center for Career Development has of course changed a lot since I graduated. Which was before a lot of people were born, 1983. Colors are bold and it’s pretty easy to find stuff. BU also knows their audience. It’s a large university, over 100 years old, and has a variety of schools.

Just appealing to undergraduates would alienate alumni returning to look for work. Still, there’s no doubt that undergraduates are the main focus. If I wanted to look for work via BU, I would probably go straight to their alumni association—yet there’s no link or suggestion thereof.

I’m just left to founder.

Well, that kinda stinks.

I’d give BU a 3/5. What is there is very easy to read and navigable. But they are utterly neglecting a good chunk of their audience, and not even giving us an escape hatch.

Widener Law School (Delaware Campus)

The Widener Career Development Office has a rather different focus, as there are no undergraduates. There are certainly undergrads at Widener, but they aren’t at the law school. And, the jobs the Widener office is going to send people to with inevitably either be private practice, JAG Corps (the military), or something academic.

There may be a few government agency jobs sprinkled in there. Also, because it’s a regional type of school, jobs will most likely be in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey. There may be a few in Maryland or New York. And if there are any federal jobs, then they’ll be in DC. But if you want to work in Indiana, you’re out of luck.

Notice anything else?

The font is larger than it was for BU, and it’s a serif font, whereas BU was sans serif.

Widener knows their audience is older, certainly at least about 20 years old (more likely to be closer to 25 at the youngest), whereas BU may have some audience members as young as 16. Also, Widener probably figures most people will read their site on a laptop or desktop. At BU? Tablets or phones.

I’d give Widener a 2/5. While it does account for user age and perhaps sensibilities, I didn’t see any way to get to any jobs! You have to click on students before you get to any place with jobs. If you click on alumni, the message is about mentoring and recruiting.

Hence the assumption is, you’ve already graduated so, you don’t need to look for work. Would that it were so easy, Widener.

Quinnipiac University

The QU Career Development Office is a lot more image-heavy. It’s another sans-serif site, and the font is smaller, like for BU. There isn’t a lot of information on the front page, but that’s by design.

Rather, you scroll down and you’re given a choice of six schools and their College of Arts and Sciences. You can go straight to the appropriate placement office from there. But once there, there’s not a lot beyond telling you to contact the director.

While there are listings to tell you where people have landed, you have no names or contact info. So, knowing someone ended up at Apple, for example, is lovely. But, what does that have to do with the price of tea in China?

As an alum, I had to back out of the CDO and go to the home page for QU, click on alumni and then on career development, and then, finally, job postings.

And then I had to choose QUCC or an external link that ended up not working. Not a good look, QU.

I would give QU a 3.5/5. Triaging people by school was smart, but there was no accommodation for us older folks who might have less than stellar eyesight.

Writer Website User Experience Design is About Accommodations

For all three schools, the web developers did a decent job with functionality. Nothing was slow. Yet there were places where all three could improve.

Hiding what the readership was looking for was a problem for all three schools. Seriously—when I go to a placement office, I want to see jobs. At the barest absolute minimum, there should have been a way to sign up for notifications or to get into the system.

And that information should have been front and center. It was a use case that all three schools missed entirely, the concept of an alum out of work or a student over the summer, who just wanted to look for a job. No talk of careers or callings or majors.

Just. A. Job.

What really irks me is that these schools all have good budgets. So, why didn’t they do any better?

The Writer Website User Experience Design on YOUR Author Website

Most of us indie writer types do not have access to any sort of a meaningful budget. And, if we do, it’s likely better spent on cover designs, editor services, and paying for hosting, or for swag and accommodations for events.

So, you’re probably not going to be doing any sort of user experience testing. But that does not mean you cannot perform some thought experiments. Come with me, if you will.

Buyer Personae

Who is your ideal reader? Who buys your stuff? And, if you’re not selling yet, who do you think would buy it? This is  beyond your family, close friends, and fellow authors doing trades.

Name this person, and give them a face. Give them demographics. Here’s mine.

Meet Amy Shapiro

Amy Shapiro is a science fiction fan who’s older than the standard college crowd but still somewhat identifies with them (she’s between 35 and 70). She is college-educated and probably has three or fewer children, if any. She’s either married or in a long-term relationship. Her sexuality is more likely to be straight but she might be bi.

Amy is Jewish although not strict and does not keep kosher. But she does see that depictions of people just like her tend to be one-dimensional.

Where are the Jews in space?Alicia Silverstone (to depict buyer persona Amy Shapiro), to illustrate writer website user experience design

Amy loves sci fi but she still finds it hard to see herself on the page or the screen. After a certain age, women fall off a cliff in Hollywood, Sigourney Weaver and Carrie Fisher notwithstanding.

She also wants something unique and different, and is willing to read a number of different kinds of plots.

Amy is comfortable with some sex scenes, even explicit, if they aren’t gratuitous. The same is true of violence, but gore makes her squeamish.

This image (from Wikipedia, so it’s a creative commons license and therefore okay to use) is of actress Alicia Silverstone, a nice Jewish gal who was born in 1976 and fits the model perfectly.

Use Cases

I alluded to this already, but now let’s get more specific. A use case is essentially how you think a person will use a particular product or service.

Of course, people who buy books intend to eventually read them. So, I’m not talking about use cases for books. Rather, I mean use cases for your writer website.

Writer Website User Experience Design — Appropriate Use Cases

Why do people go to author websites?

What do they want to accomplish? What can they get there and nowhere else, online or off?

I believe the following use cases exist for my site. Most of them probably do for yours (or will) as well:

  1. Customers who want to buy my books
  2. Fellow indie writers (just like you!) who want to discuss and learn about the craft
  3. Fans looking to personally connect to me
  4. People who want to learn about using social media and some web design (mostly intersects with #2, but not 100%)

Buyers

This is a group who, I will be first to admit, I am not serving well. But they’re the easiest to serve. They need links to buy, a shopping cart, ways to pay, and a means to check out and go home (figuratively) happy.

Craft Discussers

These are people I serve with posts like this, but also posts about inspiration, plotting, editing, and beta reading.

Fans (hi!)

For fans, the more personal ways I serve them are with self-reviews and progress reports. They want to know what I’m working on, and I like to think they want to know how I feel about that as well.

Social Media/Web Design Students

Posts just like these serve this group. So do a lot of the book reviews I’ve done over the years. I’ve read a ton of books on social media, etc. These folks want to know if those reads are worthwhile.

Takeaways for Writer Website User Experience Design

I know Amy is a buyer/fan, or at least I would like her to become one if not both. To better serve her, I need to set up sales, a thing I have not done yet.

Here are takeaways for you:

  1. Consider your ideal reader/customer and how you can appeal to them
  2. Why do you believe they are coming to your author website? Offer them what they want and need
  3. Take the time to determine who your ideal buyer persona really, really is (yes, I’m repeating myself, but it’s that important)

Who’s your Amy?

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How to Create a Writer Website: Mobile Design

No matter how much you may be used to using a laptop or a desktop computer to go to websites, that does not mean your website visitors will do the same. You have got to take mobile design into consideration.

Good Mobile Design is Imperative Because Phones are Everywhere

It is not just that they’re everywhere. It’s that so many people use their phones to surf the internet.

Statista says, in 2020, the number of mobile phone search users in the United States was 211 million. And, in 2020, according to the US Census, there were 311 million people in America. Note: the census data is for April 1, 2020, which is around when Covid started to really hit.

But you say there are 100 million people not using cell phones for search. Yep.

But there are very young children and very old folks in that group of 100 million. There are people who are comatose, and people who don’t understand how to use a cell phone. Plus there are folks who don’t have cell phones at all, and people who would use a phone for search but don’t want to use data on a limited plan.

So, they’re not all die-hards who are digging their heels in and refusing to use their phones for search.

Oh, and consider that there are parts of the world where phones are a lot more popular than computers. Lots of Asia is like that. If your readers are there, then you really need to be working on mobile design for your author website.

But it’s More Than Just Search

What happens after you find something online? On occasion, you might take note of it or bookmark a page. But the vast majority of the time, you go to that site.

What if your site looks awful? And not just in a design way. Rather, in an unusable way.

To be fair, this article from Search Engine Journal is from 2013. I would hope most of the offenders would have pulled their socks up by now.

But the image below isn’t just of a lousy mobile design experience. It is also, it would appear, a site which hasn’t been updated since (a conservative estimate here) 1987.

Search Engine Journal example of bad mobile design
Search Engine Journal example of bad mobile design – please, make the pain stop!

That’s … pretty dang terrible.

It All Goes Together in a Great, Big Design Stew

So, the metaphor (or is it a simile?) sounded better in my head, okay?

Yet the principle is still there. That is, that a writer website has got to have good overall design and navigation. But it also needs to provide a good user experience.

And it also must serve mobile search well.

Thank God for WordPress

No, seriously, they don’t pay me. I just think they’re pretty dang awesome.

You can accomplish the overall design (of any sort) of a WordPress site through the use of themes.

A theme can make your site pop, or it can make it look odd if you pick a theme that doesn’t handle your kind of site well.

Fortunately, WordPress does their best to separate the wheat from the chaff. And, themes are searchable.

So, search for a theme that’s mobile-friendly.

You can run the search either within WordPress or on Google or Bing.

These are the terms you should use for your search:

mobile friendly WordPress themes free

You may or may not want to add the word responsive to that search. And adding the word light can be helpful as well. By that, I don’t mean light in color. I mean light on HTML usage.

The problem isn’t finding one of these themes. It’s in selecting the one that you believe will serve your needs the best. WordPress absolutely spoils you for choice.

Clickable Elements and Google Search Console and Mobile Design

Er, what?

I have seen this problem before, and on more than one website. Google Search Console is owned by Google and it is how (with notifications that can hit your email) it tells you if there are problems with your website—including in its mobile design.

One issue I have seen before is “clickable elements too close together”. Putting a bunch of anchored links close together on a post can potentially do that.

Take note of these errors if you see them, and work to fix them. Sometimes that means moving an image or a link.

But if it persists, you may want to shift to another mobile-friendly theme. And do the designer a favor and tell them! They may have a workaround you can use.

Takeaways for Writer Website Mobile Design

Here are three takeaways on author website mobile design:

  1. More people than ever before are using their phones to surf the internet, search, and buy things—things like your books
  2. WordPress has a ton of mobile friendly themes. If you don’t like one, you can always try another of over a hundred (thousand?) others
  3. Google thinks Mobile First and will ding you if your site isn’t good for cell phone use—so fix any usability issues as soon after you learn of them as possible

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How to Create a Writer Website: Writer Website Design

If you’re going to have an author website, you should probably be looking at writer website design. Don’t leave it all to chance (like, er, some of us did, cough, cough).

Writer Website Design Can Help or Hurt You

Without getting into user experience (which will be the subject of a different blog post), there are definitely things you can do with writer website design that can help you.

Or hurt you.

And I will also write about designing for mobile in yet another blog post, so I will try not to get into that here too much, either.

So, rather, let’s talk about (er, it’s only me ‘talking’, but you know what I mean) organization.

Location, Location, Location

Have you ever gone to a website (and it does not have to be for an author) and looked for something, and it just plain wasn’t there? And it wasn’t that it was absent—which of course can happen to anyone in any site. Instead, it was just in some odd place.

It’s a little like finding salsa in the Italian foods section of your local supermarket.

Hey, I’m glad I found you, oh little jar of delicious salsa. But why aren’t you with your friends, the taco shells?

See what I mean?

Like Should be Together With Like

This is almost Marie Kondo level stuff.

Consider your book(s) and your blog posts, whether they are written (or even posted), or not. When you have had a blog for a while, you may need to add some menu navigation to the front page.

Let’s say, for sake of argument, that you write both horror and stuff for kids.

Er, don’t confuse the two.

You might call one menu The Spooky Nook, whereas you might call the other one Happy Books for Happy Tots. And never mind that it would likely be better if these were in two separate websites.

With WordPress, you would do this with categories, and with placing the menus where you feel they work the best.

Obviously, you make sure your horror goes to the former menu while your kids’ stuff goes to the latter.

But what about things that are in the middle? Or maybe they don’t really fit either?

First off, not everything must be in a drop-down menu format. So long as a blog post is accessible somehow, through a link on some other page, you’re good. The easiest way to make certain of that is to use tags.

Tags are for Aggregation. They Also Work as a Kind of Sneak Preview

Every time you make a tag, WordPress (and I believe Blogger may do this as well) creates a page. And, perhaps somewhere, a developer gets their wings.

But the idea behind tags isn’t to make a million of them for every occasion. Unlike with some other things, such as blog content (with exceptions), reusing is just fine. In fact, it’s downright necessary.

If your tags are visible in your theme, they will be clickable links. A site visitor will click on one, say, called children‘s books. If you are using the identical tag for all twenty (we can dream, now, can’t we?) of your children’s books, they will see everything you have on offer.

And, they might see something in your back catalog that they didn’t know about before. And may want to buy it.

But if the tag only points to one book, and another tag, called kids’ books, points to one different book, and another tag, preschoolers’ books, only points to a third book, do you see the problem here?

Your visitor has to go through three separate screens. For twenty books done up this way, you guessed it, they’re now saddled with having to go through twenty screens. Which is silly.

Is using synonyms good? It probably is, because you’re accounting for more than one type of search. The preschoolers’ books tag, in particular, is really good, because that’s a well-defined subset of children. Someone looking for a book for a teenager will know not to click there.

But how do you fit in synonyms without making visitors jump through too many hoops?

Tags are Your Friend but They are not Your Bestie

The simple solution is: use more than one tag. But at the same time, don’t go overboard. There is no need to dig through a thesaurus, hunting for obscure synonyms so you can make yet more tags. But do some research, and that means pulling up Google and trying it out for yourself.

When you search for children’s books, how many hits do you get? Beyond the ads, what are the first three results? Now do the same for kids’ books. The day I wrote this blog post, I found children’s books (no quotes or anything) got me 884 million results.

But kids’ books got me 10.9 billion hits.

While the top three results were in slightly different orders, they overlapped. These sites are using both. You should, too.

But a search for the much more obscure striplings’ books got me books by author Scott Stripling. Not even close.

For a book on the kids’ side devoted to dinosaurs and easy to read, you might tag it something like:

kids’ books, children’s books, dinosaurs, easy reader

You might tag a book for children about divorce something like:

kids’ books, children’s books, divorce, separation

Depending on the second book’s focus, you might also tag it legal or mental health, etc.

But You Just Said Tags Aren’t Your Bestie

I sure did. What I mean by this is: getting too granular isn’t helpful because it won’t aggregate. Hence the book on dinosaurs just gets a dinosaurs tag and not a stegosaurus tag—unless you have enough books on the stegosaurus where it would justify it.

Being too tag-happy doesn’t look good. It just looks amateurish and spammy.

Use a half-dozen rule of thumb.

Therefore,

  • No more than 6 tags per post and
  • If you have 6 usages or planned usages for a tag, great! Otherwise, don’t make a new tag—but see below

Exceptions are of the Devil and We’d Better Deal With Them Now

A meaningful exception to the 6 usage rule is when a topic is so exceptionally unique that you can’t use another, similar tag as a replacement.

Case in point: the 50 states. Try as you may, putting the tag for Oklahoma on a blog post about Idaho is just weird and unnecessarily confusing. Or, you can avoid the issue entirely and just create a tag called America or USA or US states, something like that.

I would also say that a very long book (as in, over 100k words, edited) can get a few extra tags if it’s justified.

Here’s an example: my book, The Real Hope of the Universe. It’s the last book in the Real Hub of the Universe trilogy. Plus people love the main character, Ceilidh O’Malley.

Tags can probably look like (I haven’t checked mine, but they’re likely to be close to this):

Real Hub of the Universe, Victorian era, science fiction, Victorian sci fi, Ceilidh O’Malley, Jake Radford, Devon Grace

I may not need the two extra names at the end (they are also significant characters, but it’s Ceilidh’s POV all the way).

Easy, useful, and no overkill.

Odds and Ends for Writer Website Design

WordPress does this beautifully but, if you’re not using it, you should consider this.

Make sure all navigation is where the visitor would expect it to be. For example, settings and accounts tend to be in an upper corner. Putting them in the middle of a page is just asking for them to be ignored/unseen. Yes, even though they are quite literally front and center.

Keep buttons, etc. consistent and use naming conventions. For our children’s author example, boys’ books and girls’ books and nonbinary books go together. But books for boys (assuming the other two stay the same) is inconsistent.

If a website visitor finds your site via your nonbinary books page (or tag or category), they will reasonably guess that reading material for boys will be called something like boys’ books. They’re a lot less likely to guess books for boys. You should, though, be using both terms on the page. But you only need the one tag like that.

Consistency and naming conventions will make your life easier, too. You only have to dream up the general concept one time.

Takeaways for Writer Website Design

Of course, there are many, many more things I could say about this. But here are three quick takeaways on the topic of writer website design:

  • Do some research to find out which words people are using when searching for books and a site just like yours. Use those words as keyword phrases (covered in my SEO blog posts), blog titles, and category and tag names
  • Keep in mind a rule of 6 for the number of tags per post and the number of times a concept repeats on your site before you create a tag for it—but be mindful of some exceptions
  • Consistency and naming conventions will save you and your readers time

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How to Create a Writer Website: Writer Website Copyright

Even if you aren’t a litigious sort of person, you will still do well to concern yourself with writer website copyright. Just because you, personally, don’t go searching for plagiarism and copyright violations, doesn’t mean that they won’t find you.

Writer Website Copyright: The Basics

If any of this looks familiar, it’s because I have other posts on copyright. And, let’s face it. It really hasn’t changed that much. But it does bear repeating all the same.

Writer Website Copyright - definition courtesy of Investopedia
Copyright definition courtesy of Investopedia

The Elements of Copyright

According to the US Copyright Office,

Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U.S.Code) to the authors of “original works of authorship,” including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works.

Per Section 106 of the Copyright Act of 1967, a copyright holder can:

  • reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords
  • prepare derivative works based upon the work
  • distribute copies or phonorecords of the work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending
  • perform the work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works
  • display the work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work
  • perform the work publicly (in the case of sound recordings) by means of a digital audio transmission

Hence copyright holders have any number of rights in their own works. Can they allow others to use them? You betcha! We call that a license.

When do Copyrights Expire?

Not surprisingly, the US Copyright Office has something to say about that.

In general, for works created on or after January 1, 1978, the term of copyright is the life of the
author plus seventy years after the author’s death. If the work is a joint work with multiple authors,
the term lasts for seventy years after the last surviving author’s death.

I won’t go into works created before January 1, 1978 (you can check out the pamphlet for that). Since it’s a good 45 years ago, many currently living authors don’t have anything that old.

Er, What?

What does this mean? Well, the short answer is that you generally do better to publish your work! After all, you can’t expect anyone to guard against copying it if they don’t know it exists.

The other important takeaway: you don’t need to assert copyright or mail it yourself or anything like that. Does it help to register your work? Absolutely! And you’ll need it to defend a lawsuit. But mailing it to yourself is silly. Seriously.

Infringement and Writer Website Copyright

We are artists and that means we are copyright holders, even if we never assert our rights and never file with the copyright office. According to American copyright law, you own it if you made it. You don’t have to mail it yourself.

But to defend a case, in the US, you must register your work. In fact, the registration is a prerequisite to actually taking someone to court for infringement. Thank you, copyright attorney extraordinaire, Michael Stewart!!

Infringement

Here, however, I will only talk about American law. If you assert copyright in another country, the law will most likely differ. Furthermore, if you have any questions, ask me in the comments section. I will try to research and answer you in a timely fashion. But don’t expect me to do the huge amount of research a hired lawyer would. Nope. I am not doing that much free work for you, sorry, not sorry.

Or ask a copyright attorney. This area, like many areas of the law, has nuances and there can be changes. This blog is no substitute for good advice from an experienced lawyer. If you think you need to protect your rights, then do so properly. And that means hiring an attorney.

Yes, you will need to actually pay that person.

Details

The American Bar Association explains it better. It publishes a Young Lawyers series to help newly minted lawyers understand the nuances of complex sections of practice. So the ABA explains:

An action for copyright infringement may arise where a third party violates one or more of the exclusive rights granted to copyright owners. To establish infringement, the plaintiff must prove: “(1) ownership of a valid copyright, and (2) copying of constituent elements of the work that are original.”

Ownership of a valid copyright consists of: “(1) originality in the author; (2) copyrightability of the subject matter; (3) a national point of attachment of the work, such as to permit a claim of copyright; (4) compliance with applicable statutory formalities; and (5) (if the plaintiff is not the author) a transfer of rights or other relationship between the author and the plaintiff so as to constitute the plaintiff as the valid copyright claimant.” A copyright registration certificate from the Copyright Office serves as prima facie evidence of elements (1) through (4). If the defendant rebuts the plaintiff’s prima facie evidence, then the above elements of valid copyright ownership become essential to the plaintiff’s case.

So what is the ABA is saying? Registration with the US Copyright office is necessary to successfully bring an infringement claim. If you think your work might be infringed upon, if you feel it is a danger and you are concerned about it, then get some peace of mind and register it with the US Copyright Office.

Are There Any Writer Website Copyright Exceptions? Or Any Copyright Exceptions?

I am so glad you asked.

Purdue University offers a terrific and very readable summary of the main known exceptions to copyright infringement claims.

Fair Use

For the fair use defense, Purdue outlines four basic factors:

Purpose and Character

Some specific use cases favor fair use. These include nonprofit, educational, and personal uses. Plus there are those which represent a potential tipping point.

These include teaching, research, scholarship, criticism, commentary, and news reporting. And there are those which favor needing permission. These include commercial, entertainment, and for-profit uses.

Hence, a nonprofit’s research is more likely to be fair use than a for-profit enterprise’s commercial use. Hence the for-profit business should seek the copyright holder’s permission.

Nature of Work

To favor fair use, it should be a fact and/or published. But to favor needing permission, it should be a fiction and/or unpublished. E. g. It’s more likely to be fair use if you repeat a published fact about dinosaurs. Whereas you more likely need permission for an unpublished novel about vampires.

Amount

Small and insignificant bits of copying are more likely to be fair use than large ones representing a work’s heart. As a result, those are more likely to require permission.

Hence, if I copy the character of Millicent Bulstrode, then the character is minor and small. But this does not necessarily mean JK Rowling won’t sue me. Still, copying Hermione Granger is another matter entirely.

Market Effect

You’re more likely to be in the fair use realm if:

  • Licensing/permissions are unavailable or there is no major impact,
  • There is limited/restricted access to the work, or
  • The user or institution owns a legal copy.

But it’s different if there is a major impact, or licensing/permissions are readily available. Or the work has worldwide availability, or there is repeated or long-term use. Then the scale slides to requiring permission.

Profit and sales are not an element to this cause of action. Although selling the copied article, particularly multiple instances of it, can place the act into the ‘requires permission’ camp.

Face to Face Instruction

According to Purdue,

The traditional classroom or face-to-face instruction is when the instructor and the students of a nonprofit educational institution are in a place devoted to instruction and the teaching and learning take place at the same time. In this setting all performances and displays of a work are allowed.

Requirements:

  1. All materials must be legally acquired.
  2. Teaching activities must take place in a classroom or a similar place devoted to instruction.

Exceptions: Virtual Instruction

Like face-to-face instruction allowance, virtual instruction generally gets a pass, per Purdue University. However, there are some specifics. For example, the class must be a regular offering in the curriculum.

What About Parody?

The American Bar Association notes the United States Supreme Court treats parody and satire separately. But the ABA feels it’s a distinction without much of a difference. Both are mockery. But satire is often more like commentary than outright mimicry.

For the ABA, and particularly when a work has both elements, the difference matters less. Although copyright holders might be more likely to license satire rather than parody. This is because parody is pretty much a knockoff by definition.

Commentary generally falls under fair use. That commentary can be amusing or not, satirical or not. Copying generally isn’t fair use. But amusement and exaggeration blurs that line.

The best advice I can give you is: don’t make your work into a copyright test case.

In other words: be original!

Writer Website Copyright: Takeaways

Beyond protecting your own work and trying not to get into your own copyright hot water, there is the matter of someone out and out pirating your stuff. This happens with annoying regularity. DMCA takedown notices can be semi-effective, but determined thieves likely will not care about your rights.

A few ways to protect yourself include using PDFs for review copies or beta reader copies, and not Word docs or Google docs. With those, copying is still possible, although you need software to do it.

If you are published through a publisher (traditional or hybrid), talk to their legal department about what they do, and how you can potentially help them. But if it’s just you, you may want to resign yourself to the fact that it can turn into just so much Whack-a-Mole.

Give pirates and infringers no quarter. But at the same time, don’t let them run your life so much that you have no time to write.

Want More of Writer Website Development?

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