Why Writers Should Not Become Designers
I have a serious Love/Hate relationship with presentation code. I was absolutely addicted to CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) for four years, before I realized how much design and code tinkering was smothering my writing.
Code Is NOT Poetry
As a writer and graphic designer, discovering that HTML, PHP, Javascript, CSS, AJAX are languages was like discovering Aladdin’s lamp for me. Source code is a genie who will grant your wishes, but only if they are explicitly stated — even then, don’t expect him to behave. Code can be a bad faerie — and act like a real evil Puck, sometimes.
Code is not poetry because poetry allows layers of meaning to exist simultaneously; HTML, CSS, and PHP are hateful dictators — deceptively arty. Code is a robot trickster who will run you in circles, taunt you — he can’t be trusted to behave the same way from one day to the next, from one environment to the next.
Code editing will rob you of your writing time.
You’d never know that I’m a CSS master by looking at my blogs right now. I made a conscious decision in 2006 to prioritize writing original content over design.
I’ve spent the last month:
- moving WordPress databases around
- coding from the WordPress Sandbox up (working the structure and function first)
- playing with the Feedburner API to write my own flares
I have successfully written a few custom WordPress plugins:
- one to power an online oracle/divination tool
- one to insert a Feed Item Footer into WordPress RSS feeds — to mimic Blogger’s awesome, out-of-the-box functionality. The Feed Item Footer works like an appended email signature file for your syndication — there are TONS of things you can strategically use this for, not the least of which is defining and powering an Incentive for subscribers to your blog. Offering a subscriber incentive, such as a free download, is the mainstay of ezine marketing strategies — having one triples or quadruples your rate of subscribers, overnight.
I will share the plugins with you when I’m absolutely sure I won’t embarrass my inner geek.
The point is — my site is still NAKED. Designing for the web has taught me why minimalism is the path of least resistance. Having a super-plain look-and-feel will not keep you from writing keyword-rich articles that your audience wants to read. Your blog’s style, template, or theme will not affect how search engines index your posts. 88% of my subscribers open and read my articles in their email programs, the rest of you are following via newsreader and live bookmarks.
Only first time visitors and a tiny fraction of regular readers even see my blog’s design; which is why layout, color choices, and graphic elements are low on my priority list. I recommend that new bloggers simply ignore the Pandora’s Box of Style — for now — you can become overly obsessed with the way your blog looks because you see it more than anyone else.
Something else to keep in mind is that the longer you use your chosen blogging tool, you will develop a workflow and begin to envision how you most want to push the boundaries. The more you blog, the more explicit your potential applications for it will become.
I lost an entire DAY yesterday trying to position ONE piece of text. Here’s the Photoshop composite of what my front page is supposed to look like — you can click the thumbnail to enlarge:
Because my site is built with multiple installations of WordPress, I want a Global Navigation bar at the top of all the blogs — to tie them all together visually, but also to make switching between the blogs simple and intutive.
Simple, sophisticated, function-first… So, what’s the problem? Well, Internet Exploiter is the problem — isn’t it always? Microsoft continues to act like a spoiled brat at a birthday party, only partially playing fair with the global standard of CSS.
Long story short — you run into these infuriating platform-specific scenarios — you have to write new sets of code JUST for Internet Explorer because there’s just no getting around the fact that the vast majority of visitors to your web site are surfing IE.
Here’s the tiny fragment of design that won’t behave and keeps me from my top priority — writing new articles. I woke up from dreaming about the hateful little bitch.
Floating those links to the right, separate from the Global Navigation bar on the left… Oh MY GOD! It’s driving me mad.
I used to brag about never needing to hire outside coders or designers — this morning, I look forward to the day when I will GLADLY pay a CSS coder to wrestle with this for me. Not because I can’t — but because I have better things to do.
Like writing new articles for thousands of subscribers who will happily read them without even SEEING my absolutely-positioned Author Contact links in the top right corner of my web site.
I am forever haunted by an anti-design wisdom my marketing mentor once blasted at me:
Nobody cares about your logo.
What writing-related activities are you allowing to feed your procrastination? Don’t let the perfect shade of green on your hover links, or a pixel-perfect banner image, become one more To Do list hurdle you must jump before getting your words out there. Learn from my ill-fated design detours — if design is not your strength, pick one of the many professionally-wrestled themes that your blogging community offers and live with it for awhile.
If and when you’re ready to let your CSS genie out of the bottle, and you want to get a basic handle/overview on the potential of editing your own templates, I recommend staying up all night one weekend and taking the Westernciv StyleMaster tutorial.
Slade Roberson is an intuitive counselor, ATP®, professional blogger, and the author of Shift Your Spirits, Automatic Intuitive Response, and the PageCoach Problogging Tutorial Series. Slade on Blogging shares behind-the-screens internet marketing, self-publishing, and blogging strategies with other personal development writers, coaches, and healing arts practitioners.
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[...] blogs are still so plain jane and NAKED? I’m a CSS expert and a graphic illustrator — but I’m a writer and a marketer [...]