In the last few days, we spent the bulk of our time working with WordPress to find another theme and customize as many things as possible, despite our limited technical knowledge. When we first launched this website on April 5, we chose a very basic, serene theme to fit our needs. In case you saw it during our launch, you may have seen the whole background color in a light green shade that reminded us of nature. We felt that was the type of respectful vibe we wanted to convey.
After some time had passed, we invited someone to take a look at the website. The reaction of the person was not what we were expecting at all. The person called it “cute” and said, “oh wow. I had no idea you came from a family of writers!” We are not a family of writers – – we are working on different projects with the end goal seeking to write books. Not the same meaning or intention at all.
It wasn’t exactly a joy to hear this person misinterpret what we were trying to accomplish and make those unflattering comments, but it spurred us to do better. Any time someone offers opinions in a critical way, it stings, but it also gives us a second of pause. During that time, we tried to step back and once again attempt to look at things a bit more objectively from the eye of the reader.
What would the reader think of our website? Would they take our efforts seriously or would they dismiss it as a kind of half-baked, garage-built joke? Knowing we wanted to pave our own path of success with the book writing projects we have in mind, we pushed through any negativity or self-doubt and built a totally different landscape to better address readers and their curiosity.
Another big change we made was our choice of language. If you notice, we made a conscious decision to change the language from first person singular (I) to first person plural (we), for the same reasons. Even though Amanda is the one primarily in charge of handling this website and the first one in the family to be working with a book goal in mind, it seems the constant “I’m doing this” and “I think that…” has not been working out well.
Of course, these are all experiments to help us better position ourselves and be looked at through a lens of professionalism rather than “homemade.” We’ll see if these changes work.
