Shutting Down

Hosting a website for the past decade or so has been a grand experiment—and mostly a pleasurable one. However, if my writing “career” has taught me anything, it’s that change is inevitable. Publishers close their doors, editors move on and, saddest of all, fellow writers, on whom I’ve depended for their friendship and critical acumen, pass from this world.

So the fact that I’m shutting down my website is no big deal in the scheme of things. Still, I decided to let you, my loyal readers, know. I would never have started a website without my webmaster Kim Westendorf. Without her gentle, informed guidance, I would’ve been too intimidated—and wary, believing that sustaining it, especially once I began blogging, would eat up all my valuable writing time. And I would not be shutting down the site right now if Kim weren’t getting out of the business of building and managing websites to write and blog herself. (I for one can’t wait to read what she writes!)

I certainly would never have entered the world of blogging without Kim’s encouragement. What did I have to say to busy denizens of the digital world? But I stuck mostly to what I’ve learned in my three decades of writing, editing, publishing and marketing my creative work, and you seemed to like that.

Blogging and Marketing

You might ask:  did blogging turn out to be an effective marketing tool for my work? Certainly not in terms of lots of sales—but writing has never produced significant income (hardly any writers make a living from book sales alone). Marketing, for me, means expanding my reading audience, which I did, a little. Even blogging as irregularly as I did linked me to readers (and, of course, fellow writers) I might never have gotten to know otherwise.  Like many of you reading this.