This is a guest post by Peter, my husband, who doubles as the technical and marketing brains of Write It Sideways. I prefer to stay away from the technical stuff and focus on what I do best–writing!
Suzannah asked me to write a post about the new site design I put together, and to show you how I can help you take your website to the next level.
The Original Design
The original design for Write It Sideways was in place for 14 months with few changes.
I’ve been plotting the demise of that original design ever since, but you know what they say about mechanics’ cars: they’re the last to be worked on…kind of like websites in the house of the IT guy.
The real challenge, however, was to convince Suzannah that Georgia font was not going to be part of her site’s future.
But that’s another story…
click to continue reading >>
When I first renewed my love of writing fiction several years ago, I had a nasty tendency to write in first person, present tense point of view.
I didn’t do it deliberately–that was simply the way the words came out.
It was only once I discovered first person, present tense is considered risky that I had to stop and ask myself why I was using it. Or, for that matter, why I would choose any particular point of view or tense.
One blogging literary agent says:
…[P]resent tense is not a reason I categorically reject a novel submission. But it often becomes a contributing reason, because successful present tense novel writing is much, much more difficult to execute than past tense novel writing. Most writers, no matter how good they are, are not quite up to the task.
I knew I needed a better reason than, “First person, present tense just comes naturally.” I had to ask myself:
- What do I want to achieve with this story?
- What point of view is going to help me best achieve that?
- What tense is going to be most appropriate? click to continue reading >>
