Blog Dis
Ideas grow on trees
2025-05-13
The creative mind is a force unto itself because the more you flex your creative muscle, the more stretched and strong it becomes. Creativity is literally in the doing, not in the wanting to do, or the intention to do, or the act of procrastination in wanting to do but not actually doing anything. I can think about being creative all I want but if I don't actually put my creative ideas to the test, they might as well sit in the bottom of my cereal bowl along with the cold oatmeal.
Creativity requires much of you, in fact, to dig deep into a well of imagination and then to pull out said ideas, metaphorically from your a**. At least that is the intention. Yet, and according to Oscar Wilde, "All great ideas are dangerous." That statement I can get behind.
Throughout my writing aspirations, I've periodically worked with web designers to re-design my author website. In the beginning I maintained a simple site to showcase my writing. The purpose being that I wanted my words to fly off the page and not necessarily the design of my website. I searched and scrolled across many site designs, in my research, basically coming to the conclusion that the fanciest sites with the most spectacular flash objects of moving parts are just that, all style and no substance. Whereas, the simplest of websites have less but more to offer, in my experience. However, the downside is that people really do prefer style over substance, which is why I originally ran with the idea to add music videos over long drawn out overtures. The attention span of readers, TV viewers, movie goers and the like have been whittled down to sound bites, and objects that race across the screen, to tantalize your eyes. At some point in time, society abandoned altogether the notion of feeding the mind. Style is about style, appearing on the cutting edge of nothingness and then re-inventing yourself into another new style. Some call this machismo. I call it TikTok and when I want to deride this site I rename it as TikTak, as in tacky, as in nothing beyond 10 meaningless seconds.
And this leads to one of the hardest challenges for every author, deciding whether to run with a pre-made website template (WordPress is a good example) or to hire a local web-designer, with whom you can create your own unique website that meets your standards. We all know and accept that the world isn't an equal place, regrettably, and web designers come in all shapes and sizes with varying degrees of skill when it comes to writing original code, as opposed to downloading open-source code that someone else has fashioned into a template. How I wish now that during my youthful Uni days I would have had the good sense to delve into extra courses on writing HTML code. It can feel like a nefarious world of website design with independent web designers going it alone vs web-design firms that have an actual brick and mortar shop with employees to handle a multitude of clients. Some design companies focus purely on sites for artists while others focus exclusively on sites for businesses. And other digital sites focus on judging sites, to issue awards for the most original, based on the complexity of their code - CSS Design Awards, is a good example; they have three categories: solo, studio and agency.
When you mix the art of creative writing with the world of digital web design, within this realm you need to successfully blend the two elements together to finally present a site that kicks a**.
Mid-year in 2024, I worked with a local web designer https://nitronium.com who I've known for 10+ years. He works alone, and works fast, and our relationship has remained strong for two reasons: he'll argue with me if I propose some cockamamie idea that'll either be incongruent to the design, or slow down the loading of my site, and instead he'll recommend an alternative design that accomplishes the same goal in as efficient a manner as possible. This is what it means to work with a web designer who has years of experience, a background in graphic design, and who writes original code and isn't afraid to push back. Together, going back and forth, it took us three months to finalize my new site design, to coincide with the release of my seventh novel POM.
At one point I made the following suggestion:
"I want movement on my Home page," to which my web design guy asked, "What kind of movement?"
I then shot back, "How should I know? I'm not the web designer!"
You see? I think I know what I need, and I may not necessarily know how to convey it, or how to explain it, and this leads to fun email dialogue, going back and forth, until my head spins.
My web designer came up with the idea of adding a parallax view to my Home page, and to incorporate animation features throughout that pop, to include a scrolling feature of my novel covers and a review on the Shop page. After all, and because I write and need to promote my books, I insisted on featuring a blurb on my home page, specifically the back cover blurb that is featured on my book, along with the novel's cover image. I like a clean look to my author website, rather than pop-ups. Colour balance, thematic structure, plus interaction is all part of the experience. You want to offer something to visitors to encourage them to explore and stay more than five seconds, before they click elsewhere to another site.
Part of this design process involves your web designer also pulling together a mobile version too, a smart and smaller version of your Desktop author website. My guy provides a test-site that he builds on his computer, then provides me with a link, so that I can scroll through each page, and once approval is signed off, then he takes the site live.
Yes, I know... many young people only surf the web using mobile phones, but times have changed. Now more than just a few, rather quite a lot, surf the Web from the comfort of their couch, syncing up their large flat screen with Internet service, so they have a large screen to view rather than some tiny mobile image. In the end, it was a no-brainer for me. I had to work with a private web designer with whom I could continue to reach out to tweak my site, such as when I added a recent feature of providing a full list by title of my blog posts on social media. I knew from the outset that I didn't want to purchase a monthly subscription with WordPress, which bills you based on the plain-Jane template you choose, after which your monthly fee continues to increase depending on the additional features you run with; each time these add-ons cost more money, and this in turn hooks your long-term business to return month after month.
If you're at this juncture in your writing career and you're having a hard time deciding which way to go, I recommend you seek a web designer to develop a long-term relationship with someone who's able to be more flexible, rather than a company who charges for services to cover salaries of their personnel. My guy, instead, created an Admin panel for me, for my access alone, that allows me to tweak my bio, the short descriptions of each of my novels, as well as to add additional eBook links to other sites, and to post Upcoming Events. It all depends on how much you wish to convey to potential readers.
Here's an image of the landing page. After all the work was done, I didn't tell my web designer Nitronium that I submitted his new site design to CSS Design Awards and it ended up receiving a nomination award, which doesn't mean much on the surface but this design awards site receives thousands of entries each day.
I encourage you to check out my author site for the full experience: https://patriciakmccarthy.com
And thank you for your interest!
Creativity requires much of you, in fact, to dig deep into a well of imagination and then to pull out said ideas, metaphorically from your a**. At least that is the intention. Yet, and according to Oscar Wilde, "All great ideas are dangerous." That statement I can get behind.
Throughout my writing aspirations, I've periodically worked with web designers to re-design my author website. In the beginning I maintained a simple site to showcase my writing. The purpose being that I wanted my words to fly off the page and not necessarily the design of my website. I searched and scrolled across many site designs, in my research, basically coming to the conclusion that the fanciest sites with the most spectacular flash objects of moving parts are just that, all style and no substance. Whereas, the simplest of websites have less but more to offer, in my experience. However, the downside is that people really do prefer style over substance, which is why I originally ran with the idea to add music videos over long drawn out overtures. The attention span of readers, TV viewers, movie goers and the like have been whittled down to sound bites, and objects that race across the screen, to tantalize your eyes. At some point in time, society abandoned altogether the notion of feeding the mind. Style is about style, appearing on the cutting edge of nothingness and then re-inventing yourself into another new style. Some call this machismo. I call it TikTok and when I want to deride this site I rename it as TikTak, as in tacky, as in nothing beyond 10 meaningless seconds.
And this leads to one of the hardest challenges for every author, deciding whether to run with a pre-made website template (WordPress is a good example) or to hire a local web-designer, with whom you can create your own unique website that meets your standards. We all know and accept that the world isn't an equal place, regrettably, and web designers come in all shapes and sizes with varying degrees of skill when it comes to writing original code, as opposed to downloading open-source code that someone else has fashioned into a template. How I wish now that during my youthful Uni days I would have had the good sense to delve into extra courses on writing HTML code. It can feel like a nefarious world of website design with independent web designers going it alone vs web-design firms that have an actual brick and mortar shop with employees to handle a multitude of clients. Some design companies focus purely on sites for artists while others focus exclusively on sites for businesses. And other digital sites focus on judging sites, to issue awards for the most original, based on the complexity of their code - CSS Design Awards, is a good example; they have three categories: solo, studio and agency.
When you mix the art of creative writing with the world of digital web design, within this realm you need to successfully blend the two elements together to finally present a site that kicks a**.
Mid-year in 2024, I worked with a local web designer https://nitronium.com who I've known for 10+ years. He works alone, and works fast, and our relationship has remained strong for two reasons: he'll argue with me if I propose some cockamamie idea that'll either be incongruent to the design, or slow down the loading of my site, and instead he'll recommend an alternative design that accomplishes the same goal in as efficient a manner as possible. This is what it means to work with a web designer who has years of experience, a background in graphic design, and who writes original code and isn't afraid to push back. Together, going back and forth, it took us three months to finalize my new site design, to coincide with the release of my seventh novel POM.
At one point I made the following suggestion:
"I want movement on my Home page," to which my web design guy asked, "What kind of movement?"
I then shot back, "How should I know? I'm not the web designer!"
You see? I think I know what I need, and I may not necessarily know how to convey it, or how to explain it, and this leads to fun email dialogue, going back and forth, until my head spins.
My web designer came up with the idea of adding a parallax view to my Home page, and to incorporate animation features throughout that pop, to include a scrolling feature of my novel covers and a review on the Shop page. After all, and because I write and need to promote my books, I insisted on featuring a blurb on my home page, specifically the back cover blurb that is featured on my book, along with the novel's cover image. I like a clean look to my author website, rather than pop-ups. Colour balance, thematic structure, plus interaction is all part of the experience. You want to offer something to visitors to encourage them to explore and stay more than five seconds, before they click elsewhere to another site.
Part of this design process involves your web designer also pulling together a mobile version too, a smart and smaller version of your Desktop author website. My guy provides a test-site that he builds on his computer, then provides me with a link, so that I can scroll through each page, and once approval is signed off, then he takes the site live.
Yes, I know... many young people only surf the web using mobile phones, but times have changed. Now more than just a few, rather quite a lot, surf the Web from the comfort of their couch, syncing up their large flat screen with Internet service, so they have a large screen to view rather than some tiny mobile image. In the end, it was a no-brainer for me. I had to work with a private web designer with whom I could continue to reach out to tweak my site, such as when I added a recent feature of providing a full list by title of my blog posts on social media. I knew from the outset that I didn't want to purchase a monthly subscription with WordPress, which bills you based on the plain-Jane template you choose, after which your monthly fee continues to increase depending on the additional features you run with; each time these add-ons cost more money, and this in turn hooks your long-term business to return month after month.
If you're at this juncture in your writing career and you're having a hard time deciding which way to go, I recommend you seek a web designer to develop a long-term relationship with someone who's able to be more flexible, rather than a company who charges for services to cover salaries of their personnel. My guy, instead, created an Admin panel for me, for my access alone, that allows me to tweak my bio, the short descriptions of each of my novels, as well as to add additional eBook links to other sites, and to post Upcoming Events. It all depends on how much you wish to convey to potential readers.
Here's an image of the landing page. After all the work was done, I didn't tell my web designer Nitronium that I submitted his new site design to CSS Design Awards and it ended up receiving a nomination award, which doesn't mean much on the surface but this design awards site receives thousands of entries each day.
I encourage you to check out my author site for the full experience: https://patriciakmccarthy.com
And thank you for your interest!
