It's hard to create your own website. I guess it's a lot like writing your own bio, doing your own resume, writing your own will and obituary. It's hard to be objective, to get to the truth, to represent what really matters and to tell your own story. I suppose it has a lot in common with home reno's that way.
My new site under my own name was done by Brenda Johima who lives in the Comox Valley. She went above and beyond when it came to removing my url off GoDaddy servers, communicating with the new host, HostPapa, doing the SEO and all that stuff in the back end that I really didn't want to spend the time to learn, hence my decision to hire her.
It feels good to finally have a WordPress site although at this point I'm not even sure what the focus of the blog on the new site will be. Now, I know this is going to sound strange coming from someone who writes, but I don't really like writing about writing. What new information could I possibly provide? It's probably some sort of creative writing blasphemy to say this but I actually dislike writing about writing almost as much as I usually dislike attending readings.
If you've been to a lot of readings in your youth, that's usually good. Done. Enough. I heard Margaret Atwood read at UBC in the mid 1980s. She was wearing a long black cape on a winter evening. I was surprised at her monotone voice. Gail Anderson Dargatz is a very amusing reader. I saw her at the Sechelt Writer's Festival a long time ago. Maeve Binchy was fantastic at the Vancouver International Writer's Festival as well, ages ago,where she was on stage with her husband. The most memorable reading I've heard to date was by Tomson Highway, reading from his book Kiss of the Fur Queen. He was so funny. Funny matters to me. Not exclusively, but it matters. I liked to be entertained by readings. Call me crazy.
For me, everything about writing is in the act, not in the talking about the act. And, when I put it like that, writing and sex have that in common.
If you'd like to follow the other blog, that might be good. No promises.