Square Peg, Round Hole

What can I say? I wasn’t happy with that last website I designed. I know, I know, it was up for less than a month. But considering it took me less than a week to realize the extent to which the new site wasn’t working, I think I showed great restraint in waiting a whole month to fix it. It’s not that the site was buggy or didn’t behave; it’s just that it was poorly designed. And it’s entirely my fault. I was trying to fit old content into a new space. I was trying to wear pants on my head. I was trying to put a fish in a tree. You get the idea, right?

So another life lesson that I thought I’d already learned but somehow needed to learn all over again: You can’t fit a square peg in a round hole. But more importantly, you shouldn’t try. My problem in this case is that I didn’t realize I had become a square peg or that the new website design platform of Squarespace was a round hole. I figured one platform is pretty much like the other. But I was wrong.

So designing this new site caused me to approach my website the way I approach my picture books: visually. I had to remember that less is more, particularly when it comes to text. I had to think about what images would move the story along. I had to remember that a picture really is worth a thousand words—which is hard when you’re a writer and the next thousand words are going to be the best words you’ve ever written in your life. Let it go.

Anyway, I hope you like the new design. Now that I have the basic site up and running, I’ll be tweaking, tweaking, tweaking for days. (We in the biz call it revising.) And I’m going to push myself to “get visual” wherever possible. I’ll be adding some more video and looking for ways for visitors to join the conversation. Squarespace is a highly integrated platform, which is what attracted me to it in the first place. So welcome! Make your presence known. And come back often.