What’s Up
It all started with a conversation about a camera. In passing, no less. Just one of those quick comments in between shuffling and shuttling kids from one extra-curricular to another. Just something to do with a certain camera.
About a month or so later, my friend and neighbor dropped by to show me a web site that had more detail on it, and she wanted to be sure and tell me before both of us forgot about it again.
So we pulled up the web site. And she started clicking here and there and there and here, hunting down a particular post in this particular blog.
And I completely lost all sense of space and time because my Designer’s Brain had click-trip-whiz-banged into overdrive and my cerebral cortex dropped its jaw. Because there on the screen in front of me was, without rival, the best blog layout and design I’d ever seen. Period.
When she found the post she was looking for and telling me more about this particular camera, I was struggling to stay focused while also directing the traffic in my head that had suddenly clogged the interstate of my mind and caused a thirty-car pile up. And right during rush hour, no less, because the kids were due home any moment and that meant that the house was about to transmogrify into All Hands On Deck.
That was back in August of 2009. And it was the start of what has since become the bane and blessing of my life for all its moving parts, promise, and insufferable artistic moodiness (shut up). (See? There it is again.) And all that because I realized, in about thirty seconds, that what I really wanted to do was create a blog that could serve as ground zero for everything else I was already doing and enjoying the most.
That began my researching and deconstruction of other blogs out there, as well as outlining something like a plan for what I wanted to do. Which is really saying A Lot considering that I’m an artist and plans don’t actually surrender themselves to our type very well. Let alone rise to the level of At All Important.
By researching I mean that I knew I wanted to create a blog, but wanted more information before deciding what to design. No template for me. I’d create this from the ground up and call it my own or have nothing to do with it. And by deconstruction I mean that, having decided that the blog my neighbor showed me had raised the bar on layout, design and presentation…and no matter where else I looked, I could find nothing—NOTHING—that, in my experienced opinion (and it is lol) came close. And now, having landed on a style and presentation philosophy all my artistry and design uppitiness could respect, I spent about one week in source code enough to make The Matrix look like Tinker Toys.
And I’m not lying.
So, I swallowed all my pride and right in front of God and everybody, designed my own blog based on the design brilliance of this other one. Which, you have to appreciate, I absolutely hated doing. But there was simply no getting around the obvious: there was no way I could have seen the best and settle for any less.
So.
I started with a clean sheet of paper, the web design parameters of height, width, and layout, and married it with my own graphic standards and color pallet, to lean hard into making Waltzing in Perdition a reality.
It’s been a love/love relationship ever since. I’ve blogged everyday (save about ten) since it launched last September and have been enjoying cultivating the process and fine-tuning everything about it. In fact, thanks to finding an outstanding WordPress wizard in London, I’ll be launching the second iteration of WIP™ on April 8th.
A great deal is coming down the pike and I’ve been working on whole new sections for the blog to round out what has come to the surface over the last several months. That is, a section devoted solely to the stories…one devoted to the process of writing the books…one for photography and cartooning (I’m going to be creating how-to videos for both)…one for some kitchen-type topics…and one I’m still sort of trying to decide on.
In addition to the blog’s upcoming New and Improved, there’s the second book in the Waltzing in Perdition Chronicles: On Flying Blind. I’m up to my neck in getting that one together, and, to be honest, you should be up over my head. But, Life being what it is, getting to it means getting past everything else jockeying for attention every single day. Like everyone else. Not easy.
Oh…and the camera? Got it. And with it the final piece to producing, I hope, a blog worth enjoying full of good storytelling and good pictures.
And, let me be the first to say it: if you ask me, all the WIP™ posts in the last month or so have been rather on the anemic side. It’s just that I’ve been rewiring and reorienting where this whole thing is going based on everywhere it’s been. That said, forgive me what I’m sure has come across as lazy. I have pages and pages of stories I’ve been collecting and ear-marking and keeping in the wings until things around here got a little more ship shape.
So. That’s what’s up. Or what’s been up. Stick around, folks.
The Waltz is going to get even better.
And we’ll wait to dance with you in joy and with a big smile.