So, here is the first post as part of my website makeover.
I’d known for a while that I needed to refresh my website design, simplify it and make it more focused on who I was and where I was now. I had signed up for this online website builder called Weebly a couple of years ago; and hadn’t done anything with it since. When, serendipitously, I got an email from them a few days ago, just as I was strongly experiencing the need to redesign my website.
As a writer growing up in the printing business, content and form seemed to be inextricably intertwined. Back in the "old days," all content was put together character by character, line by line with little pieces of metal "type." I started working with my dad, "composing" content, proofreading and even editing when I was about 8 years old.
Fast forward to the web. I started coding web pages early on, by hand, learning HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, and so on. Eventually I began working with, and paying for, various tools to make the job easier. But eventually I got tired of trying to make all the tools work the way I wanted, and began the quest for the simplest tool that would get the job done. Not necessarily the prettiest way--though I do like pretty--but the most efficient and effective way to actually get the job done. That job being communication, i.e. getting the story or message out to the public.
I've spent 30-odd years of writing and getting paid for it as a Technical Writer, in government, public and private companies, writing for a global audience and having my work translated into over twenty languages. Eventually I realized that I wanted to say more, do more, on a personal--not corporate-- level, and how vast the chasm was, for most folks, between creating content and publishing it.
Of course there are many fine words to describe the gradations and specialities between writing and reaching one's audience, no matter how big or small that audience is. But ultimately the intent of most writing is to communicate to someone else, i.e. a target audience. This is publishing in its essence. Publishing, according to Webster and friends, is "to make generally known." In copyright law, such as the the Universal Copyright Convention and the Berne Convention, the simplest definition of publication comes down to the "distribution of copies to the general public with the consent of the author."
Publishing with one of the "Big 5," is something nearly every author dreams of, but few attain. Yet, in addition to the process of eternal submission/rejection and the hope of acceptance, there is the path of "self-publishing" or "indie-publishing." Though it is not without its challenges, and though it is not as simple as at first it may appear, it is, nevertheless, "publishing" in the most basic, direct way possible--by talking charge of one's own destiny and determining to make one's writing "generally known" and available to the public.
I’d known for a while that I needed to refresh my website design, simplify it and make it more focused on who I was and where I was now. I had signed up for this online website builder called Weebly a couple of years ago; and hadn’t done anything with it since. When, serendipitously, I got an email from them a few days ago, just as I was strongly experiencing the need to redesign my website.
As a writer growing up in the printing business, content and form seemed to be inextricably intertwined. Back in the "old days," all content was put together character by character, line by line with little pieces of metal "type." I started working with my dad, "composing" content, proofreading and even editing when I was about 8 years old.
Fast forward to the web. I started coding web pages early on, by hand, learning HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, and so on. Eventually I began working with, and paying for, various tools to make the job easier. But eventually I got tired of trying to make all the tools work the way I wanted, and began the quest for the simplest tool that would get the job done. Not necessarily the prettiest way--though I do like pretty--but the most efficient and effective way to actually get the job done. That job being communication, i.e. getting the story or message out to the public.
I've spent 30-odd years of writing and getting paid for it as a Technical Writer, in government, public and private companies, writing for a global audience and having my work translated into over twenty languages. Eventually I realized that I wanted to say more, do more, on a personal--not corporate-- level, and how vast the chasm was, for most folks, between creating content and publishing it.
Of course there are many fine words to describe the gradations and specialities between writing and reaching one's audience, no matter how big or small that audience is. But ultimately the intent of most writing is to communicate to someone else, i.e. a target audience. This is publishing in its essence. Publishing, according to Webster and friends, is "to make generally known." In copyright law, such as the the Universal Copyright Convention and the Berne Convention, the simplest definition of publication comes down to the "distribution of copies to the general public with the consent of the author."
Publishing with one of the "Big 5," is something nearly every author dreams of, but few attain. Yet, in addition to the process of eternal submission/rejection and the hope of acceptance, there is the path of "self-publishing" or "indie-publishing." Though it is not without its challenges, and though it is not as simple as at first it may appear, it is, nevertheless, "publishing" in the most basic, direct way possible--by talking charge of one's own destiny and determining to make one's writing "generally known" and available to the public.
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