Put on a Happy Face

If you've been visiting the site, you might notice that things look a little different around here! I've redesigned. When I first launched this blog, I spent a lot of time selecting just the right shades of dark gray for page- and post-backgrounds and lighter gray for the titles and body text. When I invited an editor friend of mine to check out my brand new thing, he found it "wicked hard to read" here. "Think of your elders and our sensitive, failure-prone eyesight," he said. (It bears mentioning that "elders" in this context apparently means "late thirties," which means I was being encouraged to consider an even greater contingent than the word itself suggests.) I was resistant to the idea (eat more carrots! use a feed reader!), but good editors generally give sage advice, and the internet seemed to agree that black text on white background was best for big chunky blocks of words. So I put "change color scheme" on my longlist, but what I said to my friend was this: "Maybe it wants to be gray. Maybe the text does not want to be read."

This is a tic I have. The fact that I devote a considerable amount of time to creating things that I have no desire to share makes me question the wisdom of pursuing a writing career. The notion of presenting my work fills me with anxiety and self-doubt. Most of the time, I have to force myself to do it, and then I get to questioning the value of what I'm offering, and it all goes downhill from there. For example, I was happily active on Fictionaut for several months, but when the site came out of beta and all the stories went public, I hid everything I'd written and I stopped commenting on other people's work. It scared me.

Of course I don't want to be like this, and I've come to figure that the best way to fight the problem is perhaps to behave as though there simply isn't a conflict when I do the opposite of what I'd prefer. I find myself thinking of the one-line refrain in Wilco's "How to Fight Loneliness"--it's "just smile all the time." Smile when you don't want to. Everybody loves a smile. (Or at least it makes a predator hesitate, right?)

So, along with my renewed dedication to regular posting, behold my blog's happy new face: higher contrast, larger font, better kerning, and by all appearances greater willingness to be read. (Which is good, because those carrots weren't doing your eyesight any favors.)