I want to apologize, first off, for any subscribers who got a link to tomorrow’s post that led to nothing. 🙁 I am using a new theme for my blog that includes an editing tool I’m still getting used to, and I accidentally hit “publish” when I just wanted to save a layout. I know that must’ve been annoying and confusing, and I’ll try to make sure that doesn’t happen again!

I’ve had this blog for years, and it’s my pride and joy. I love sharing writing inspiration, writing research, good books, what I’m working on, and more…plus getting sneak peeks of what some of you are writing…but it was never pretty. I always told myself that “someday” I’d redesign it. Well, “someday” was this past weekend! Because I’m neither a designer nor a web developer, it takes me a very long time to figure out how to do some of the simplest things. I still have a ton more to do, but I’m thrilled about the new look!

The blog had some serious bugs, so I had to get this done. One of the biggest issues was that last October, Google stopped tracking my website traffic correctly. By using another tool, I could see that the traffic hadn’t actually dropped by 90% overnight—it hadn’t dropped at all, in fact—but I didn’t know what was going on. I hired a website consultant who came highly recommended to identify what needed to be fixed, but he didn’t figure it out, so that was not $500 well-spent.

Oh, well! I’m very proud, because it looks like I have fixed that issue myself! 

I like this new layout for comments much better because I think it’s easier to tell who you’re replying to. (This is very important for WIP Wednesdays!) I am still fixing things, and if you run into any weird issues on the blog and feel inclined to let me know here, I would so appreciate it! 

One thing I’ve struggled with when it comes to the blog design is that I write both nonfiction reference books and fiction. In the past, I think I leaned too heavily on the “nonfiction” feel for the blog. I think I was afraid that if my blog looked too feminine, it would scare male readers away…but now that I’ve met a few guys who read my blog, I can’t imagine that they’d be prejudiced in that way. And after all, I certainly wouldn’t refuse to read a male writer’s blog because it was too manly-looking! 🙂

Does anyone else have branding issues because they do more than one kind of writing—or more than one kind of thing in general? I’d love to hear about it! 

Thanks so much for subscribing to the blog. I’m honored, and I appreciate it so much! (And I’ll be back tomorrow with that other post! 😀 ) 

Bryn

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