It has been another stressful month of intense weekend work and low levels of published output on my blog. I finally invested in a WordPress Business Plan and after two months of unsuccessful haggling on Fiver, I hired a web designer at a reasonable price to construct me a professional website.
Well, investing in a business plan proved to be an act of faith I should have taken many moons ago, but I did not know exactly what I wanted from a web designer and did a poor job of communication and a lot of praying for a good outcome. This I would not advise.
I learned that an author website and platform is a very personal thing. What I received for two hundred dollars did not in any way artistically represent my platform, values and purpose. With intense stress, I had to part with two hundred dollars I could have invested in advertising and learn to use plugins and set up a professional website on my own using models from other platforms to teach me.
For this reason, I want to take a minute and say thank you to some other writers who significantly helped me in this process. These are some effective platforms that helped me realize what I could accomplish from making a better first impression. Many of them are connected to my niche and offer writing that readers or other authors might enjoy:
https://www.yourwriterplatform.com/ with Canadian Kimberly Grabas
https://www.esmewang.com writes about schizophrenia
https://rachaelintheoc.com writes about sexual abuse
https://zackmcdermott.com great marketing for his memoir on madness
I have managed to start a few posts and, those readers who are on my author email list, will get a sneak peak of an article I have written specifically for the new social worker magazine. If you are not on my official email list, what are you waiting for? Click! Here! Now!
The post I provided as a sneak peak last month about demystifying complex trauma and my history of sex abuse has yet to be picked up by any media outlets. And I am going to reach out to some new publishers, but I have also learned to research publishers to some extent and write specifically for them
Finally, as my press release suggests, I have spent the month going back and forth trying to decide what to do about my pseudonym, Clyde Dee. After reading about other memoir writers who have struggled with the same issues, I have decided not to retreat into my shell and publish under Clyde Dee anymore.
My memoir has significantly offended some family members which was what I feared; however, some have been supportive. Most of what I said about people was written from the perspective of me in madness and I think that helps. And although I ultimately tried to be harder on myself than I was on any of them, I understand that my perspective on life is offensive to some and I have decided to accept painful pushback as gracefully as I can with as much compassion for them as I have for myself.
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