website

It was quite a process for me, helping put together my website. After I started negotiating with Charles Dye on the project, I stalled the project for some three months just to work on the first step. The masthead... or what I've been calling the masthead, although that's probably not the technical term. I knew I wanted the image at the top to be a piece of a painting I did called Still Life With the Devil - which you can see in full at the top of the blog. Doesn't seem that difficult to take a thin slice of a painting and run your name across it, but it was quite a math problem, fitting it all together just right, especially since the book in the painting is slanted just slightly.

Charles was so patient with me as the weeks wore on and I played around with try after try...







That's a lot of time spent looking at your own name.

I've never been quite comfortable with that person, that person with that name*, so it was an odd process to be creating a rather large cyberspace devoted to her, to me. And here I am, now, launching this thing, and Charles says let's have a launch party.

Let's throw a party to celebrate the me that put together a website to celebrate me. Heck, when I was a kid I was mortified at my birthday parties to open presents from friends because it felt too selfish.

But he's right, of course. Charles knows more than just how to frame a website that looks professional and contains just the right stuff in the right places. He knows about promotion, he knows what it takes to get people to look, which is why you put together a website in the first place.

He also knows that we writers are strange people--writing all the time to have our voices heard but often wanting to hide in the closet and not be seen. Really, this event on Thursday is more than a launch party for a website - it's another little step in my life, toward being comfortable as that person.

In the end, the masthead I went with was this one. And we were off and running, putting together the site. Charles asked me what I wanted out of a website, gave lots of great suggestions, and was never pushy if my ideas were different than his. I thought this was the perfect combination in a webmaster. It made me feel supported, made me feel I had an expert giving me expert advice, but that I was also creating something that was uniquely mine.

When he turned the keys over to me, he taught me really easily how to drive it on my own. He was very patient, he explained things well, and the transition was very smooth.

I'll be updating the site plenty. Soon, I'll be posting info about some upcoming reading events I'll be doing in conjunction with the next issue of Thumbnail Magazine. In the meantime, drop by the Blue Monk on Thursday night...

When: Thursday, February 10, 2011 9:00pm-ish

Where: The Blue Monk, 3341 SE Belmont, Portland

Facebook event invite is here.

[* it's not the name, of course, it's just the insecure inside the person. i think it's a perfectly fine name...]