I think that's at least the majority of the website tinkering done, although there's still lots of links to be fixed and the like. I've also decided to set up a mailing list, which is the next big thing I have to take care of.
I liked the way the website before, but it had two big problems: the way I'd set it up, for various under-the-hood reasons, was very hard to update outside of blog posts, which is why so much of it is still somewhat out of date. That had to change. The other big problem, at least to me, is that as much as I liked the static landing page with its artwork, it introduced an extra click for a user to make. I wanted them to get as much relevant information about me and the books as possible, which meant going straight to that information. That's going to mean another static landing page, probably combining the 'About Me' page with current news and forthcoming work. Hopefully I'll get to that in the next week.
In the meantime, the Work in Progress continues: the current word count is about seventy thousand words, and I can figure on getting this first draft finished, probably, sometime in early April. The working title is Field of Bones, but it doesn't exactly suggest a Hard SF planetary adventure, at least not to me. Probably I'm going to have some hard thinking on the title.
And it really is a rough draft. I'm not quite sure why, but for just about the first time in my life I've ploughed straight through the story without stopping to tinker and fix things. I've not gone back to rewrite anything, and instead of spending countless hours online trying to find some minute piece of information, I'm making use of textual placeholders and, basically, not worrying about it. This is good, I think, because that tendency towards tinkering is perhaps better suited to the editing process. And, in the past, I've spent inordinate times tinkering only to realise the section I was tinkering with had to be chopped.
So in terms of how I approach writing a novel, I think we can consider this an improvement.
I liked the way the website before, but it had two big problems: the way I'd set it up, for various under-the-hood reasons, was very hard to update outside of blog posts, which is why so much of it is still somewhat out of date. That had to change. The other big problem, at least to me, is that as much as I liked the static landing page with its artwork, it introduced an extra click for a user to make. I wanted them to get as much relevant information about me and the books as possible, which meant going straight to that information. That's going to mean another static landing page, probably combining the 'About Me' page with current news and forthcoming work. Hopefully I'll get to that in the next week.
In the meantime, the Work in Progress continues: the current word count is about seventy thousand words, and I can figure on getting this first draft finished, probably, sometime in early April. The working title is Field of Bones, but it doesn't exactly suggest a Hard SF planetary adventure, at least not to me. Probably I'm going to have some hard thinking on the title.
And it really is a rough draft. I'm not quite sure why, but for just about the first time in my life I've ploughed straight through the story without stopping to tinker and fix things. I've not gone back to rewrite anything, and instead of spending countless hours online trying to find some minute piece of information, I'm making use of textual placeholders and, basically, not worrying about it. This is good, I think, because that tendency towards tinkering is perhaps better suited to the editing process. And, in the past, I've spent inordinate times tinkering only to realise the section I was tinkering with had to be chopped.
So in terms of how I approach writing a novel, I think we can consider this an improvement.
