Rosie J.
- Feb 7
- 5 min read

#IWSG February 2024: Author Websites

The Insecure Writer's Support Group in alternating white and orange words

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds! Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time - and return comments. This group is all about connecting! Let’s rock the neurotic writing world! Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.

The awesome co-hosts for the February 7 posting of the IWSG are Janet Alcorn, SE White, Victoria Marie Lees, and Cathrina Constantine!

The following link will allow you to peruse everyone in the Blog Hop.

Link | IWSG Blog Hop Participants

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February 7 question: What turns you off when visiting an author's website/blog? Lack of information? A drone of negativity? Little mention of author's books? Constant mention of books?

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Hello, friends!

I am astounded with how quickly this year is going. I feel like it was just Christmas!

January was a weird month for me. Usually, I make the best of it because my birthday is late in the month, so I use it as an excuse to buy myself stuff and go out to eat too much, but we got 8" of snow with below zero temperatures for almost a week straight. So basically, I was snowed in the entire week I usually do fun stuff for my birthday.

I spent the first 10 days of the month in a spicy scenes writing haze participating in a Smut Writing challenge in a Discord server that I'm in. There was a prompt for every day but around day 10 and over 20k words written, I decided I needed to focus on the things I actually needed to focus on, instead of random fun scenes from either old works or with entirely new characters. It did give me some ideas for some future books though.

So, I pivoted and got back to working on my holiday romance and my contemporary romance. I'm pivoting a bit on my holiday romance and doing some edits to make it more of a romantic suspense with a holiday backdrop instead of a holiday romance with light suspense.

I also completely rewrote the first chapter.

Whew.

I'm checking out a few romance unpublished contests to enter this year to see how things go. I figure, why not, right? Nothing to lose from trying.

I've decided my motto this year is "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." (Wayne Gretzky) so that's what I'm doing. Taking all the shots.

I guess I was relatively productive in January. Which is great because in December I literally did nothing creative. I crashed hard.

How did your January go? Get off to a good start to 2024?

The Love Club

New and exciting, especially for February. I got invited to be on The Love Club podcast with two of the most awesome people I've met on Discord: Chele and Elle!

Feel free to check out the episode I was on! We were just a gaggle of giggles for the most part.

But, exciting, The Love Club expanded to open a Discord for readers and writers of romance!

Our Book Club picks for February are Outdrawn by Deanna Grey and The Sun, The Storm, and The Shadows by Mikayla Hornedo.

Feel free to join us on Discord, too!

Link | The Love Club Discord

Romance Writers of America (RWA) Pen to Paper Program

I'm absolutely loving being a Guide for the RWA Pen to Paper program. It's a lot of work to be prepared every week to go over the materials with the mentors in my small group with my co-guide but it's been so rewarding and so much fun.

I'm going to start running sprints next week for the participants. And I've been given so much to consider for my own writing and so many resources. We've had such great discussions, too.

I love mentoring writers, and helping these budding romance writers through their first draft writing process gives me so much joy. We've only had three or four of our weekly meetings but we've covered so much already. From talking about GMC (Goal, Motivation, and Conflict) to creating characters with emotional wounds to how to appropriately create diverse worlds when you aren't from a certain background and how to use sensitivity readers when you do create characters from a background different than your own.

The IWSG Prompt - Author Websites

I legit was about to hit publish and realized I hadn't answered the prompt for the month. I know it's not required, but I always try to say at least something about it!

I don't know if it's so much author websites as ANY websites that I feel some type of way about. I need a good user interface, and please PLEASE put the effort into making it responsive to mobile or tablet or PC. Not everything works in all the spaces. Website builders like Wix make it super easy to go in and see how your website looks on a mobile phone or a tablet. If I get on a website that's hard to navigate on my phone, then I'm done. I might check it out later on a PC browser, but likely not.

Also, I have vision issues, so if the website is too bright or the contrast on the colors is bad and I have a hard time reading it, that will immediately turn me off.

So my issues are more with user experience than with the content on the page. Unless the content blatantly goes against my personal worldview and makes me not want to support that author anymore.

Things that get me to stay? A good blog. Interesting topics. Information about books the author has available and where/how to buy them.

Honestly, though, I know it's good to have a website, but I'm more like to stalk an authors' social media pages than a website. I only visit the website if there's a compelling reason to do so, like free content! Hook me with a reader magnet.

Twitch Writing Sprints Reminder!