Getting It Right the First Time

Not going to be a big post today, I just spent an hour writing something that was really unhappy with. I'll come back to that story later, but not until I have time to make it not suck.

I guess that contradicts my post title a bit, but that's not I want to talk about...

Continuing in the theme of the week, I'm talking about my site. I'm peer testing the design a lot. Most major changes I run by people to get their opinion. The more feedback I get on it now, the fewer changes I have to make on it in the future when it'll be harder to change.

I'm taking advice on ideas, two of the best changes I've made have come at others' suggestions.

So continuing in that vein, here's what I've got as of today.


Click for larger view.

The navigation bar going across the top is going to be cut and I'm going to have the tabs be the nav bar. They're choppy now, but I just wanted to get an idea of how it'd look before I spent the time making them look great.

The big bubbles in the middle will be News/Featured Stories type things. Not sold on that layout.

But that's that. Tell me what you think, what you think I should change, what could be more clear, what I could add. Thanks a bunch.

Now it's back to work. Or maybe food...

The Diary of a First Time Designer

Day 1:

I'm making a website.

Day 2:

Oh shit... I'm making a website?

Day 3:

I $@%!ing hate Photoshop and the g#%%^@n teacher who thought she was teaching me a mother $@%!ing thi... *commence seizures*

In all seriousness, I like Photoshop. It's just got a bitch of a learning curve.

Right now I'm designing the basic layout of the site. The top banners, where I want the text boxes to go, sign in box, fonts, colors, those sorts of things.

It's sloppy still, most things are leveled by eye, not computer, so maybe not completely level. I'll be able to fix that as I program it in. Just a loose blueprint for the most part.

I'm really happy with the idea I had for my header. Once I perfect the font, I think it's going to look super solid. My friend Tynan had a great idea to make something cleaner that I was really unhappy with, it'll look easily 10x better just by implementing this quick fix.

I'm going to implement a forum, which will be easy with phpBB (best open source forum out there). The point of this forum is to really create a community among the authors, a place where they can discuss the texts, plot development, world development, and everything else about writing.

Also, this is going to be the only place to lobby for their stories. Because it's vote based, it's going to be imporant to garner the support of other people. The forums will be key to having your voice heard, especially for the less established writers. I fully expect there to be alliances, groups banding together to push a certain plot line, using their collective brilliance to make the best story.

I've been encountering a lot of "So where do I go now?" as I progress. Being my first time, I'm not positive on how it's done. It's awkward and there's a lot of feeling around in the dark. (Seriously a lot of parallels to teen sex... Programs that work beautifully, if you know how to use them... The possibility of everyone finding out you're terrible... Shame.) I've been going a lot on the help of my friends. It's good to have people around who already know what they're doing. Tynan already runs several sites and my friend Pat knows a lot about coding and offered to help me with the more complicated stuff.

Resources are the best.

Other news:

Been having some off days lately. My initial "LET'S DO THIS" has tapered a bit, which is typical of me. But even with the reduced productivity, I'm still getting an assload more done than I was before.

I've had some depression spikes the last couple days, partly because of the reduced productivity, partly causing the reduced productivity. But, I'm not sure when I'm going to be able to get all the tests done that I need to for the neurotransmitters. In order to start that though, I started taking some 5-htp this morning (100mg, single serving) and after maybe 3 hours I already feel different up top. I feel BETTER. It may be mental, just thinking better because I took something, in the same sense that a placebo would work. But who cares. I FEEL better.

I've been bad about getting on my workout schedule. I'll workout today.

Simple.ology is going well. The small lessons are getting kind of annoying because it seems like I haven't done/learned much in the last week or so. But the daily praxes are due to start in two days I think. The computer programs are also frustratingly poorly written. I have a sloppy workaround for one, but the other won't even let me shut my computer down when it's running.

I can't understand that one.

Be gentle... It's my first time.

"Do you want to go to the bedroom?" she asked.

"No. I want to make a website."

Don't worry, I'm not quite ready to post the self improvement of my sex life here. Also, I need to not talk about my sex life as being "self" improvement anymore. Kinda gives off the wrong impression...

Anyway.

I'm starting on my first website. I was hesitant to divulge any major details about it at first, fearing that once I let it out into the universe, it would be inevitably ruined or stolen or some nonsense. But then I realized that's absurd. AND even if someone is douchey enough to steal my idea, it won't matter anyway cause I'll make my site 10x better than theirs.

I like to write (one of my favourite things about having a blog thus far).

I have zero desire to be a starving artist or to ever have that be a remote possibility.

So, how am I to make a steady income that incorporates, but not necessarily is limited exclusively to, writing?

One option is to become a professional blogger. Something I could see myself enjoying eventually, I'd want to build up my repertoire of life experience first before I took it super seriously.

The other option, is Writing Republic (tentative title).

*Cue fireworks*

The idea originally came about while I was thinking about PostSecret and how Frank makes a living pretty much doing nothing but providing a very simple outlet for people. (Originally at least, he does tour to colleges now.) I thought, "I can easily come up with something just as good pretty easily."

I did.

In very simple terms, it's like the game pretty much everyone played when they were kids. A story is started and is passed off to the next person, who continues the story in their own fashion, until the story is completed.

This in and of itself could be and has been the basis for a pretty good website. Online, it's called "Addventuring." These stories typically involve many branches of stories, going in all different directions, sometimes never ending.

That's going to be a key difference between my site and the others. There will only be one storyline per story and there will be finality.

But how? How can one story possibly be selected from the multitudes sent in and still encourage people to write more?

I leave that to the people. A vote. A Republic perhaps?

(You see what I did there?)

The stories will be started and the readers/authors will submit the next section or chapter of the story. These submissions will be posted and then voted on for a period of time. The winner of the vote becomes the next, set in stone, section or chapter. The readers/authors will then base the next section from the previous one and it will be voted on, rinse and repeat until the story is completed.

There will be very few parameters set. I want there to be a lot of freedom in the writing, people changing points of view, who the protagonist is, what the conflict is. So I won't limit it by saying "This story is going be a coming of age story written in the third person."

I think those sort of constructs are the things that limit people's skill and enjoyment of the writing process. Broad guidelines, like simply defining what genre the story will be in, will lead to much more creativity and thus participation.

I'll let the authors define whether or not something should be done a certain way. It's pretty much all going to be in their control.

One of the few exceptions to this rule is going to be length of submissions and frequency of submissions. I don't want the stories to be hijacked by a particular author.

The length is self explanatory. People aren't going to wade through a submission if they know they don't have to vote for it.

But frequency of submissions, or wins rather, is to prevent a particular author from becoming all powerful. I think I'll limit the consecutive wins to three. Which is more than enough time to sway a storyline completely, but few enough to prevent it from dominating a story. (The number of times I'll allow depends on what I set the submission length to.)

I know I can make this site a success, because I know there are thousands of people who, like me, love writing, but aren't willing to make the plunge. So it sits idly as an unused or seldom used skill. People will take the time to write a chapter when they know they can easily abandon it. It's optional commitment.

An open relationship, if you will.

But, because it's optional, there should also be a reward system to encourage people to stay committed. Part of that system will be in the process itself. Seeing that your writing was good enough to garner the support of others who voted for you.

But I don't think that will be enough to get continued participation from the more casual writers, regardless of their skill level. So, I'm going to throw in a little more to the mix:

I'm going to get the stories published.

Not all of them, hopefully there will be too many stories to make that a reality, at least in the near future. I'll probably continue the voting system to decide which stories will be published. (Double benefit, the ones that win are most likely the better stories and will thus sell the most.)

But why would people participate so I can make money off of their hard work? Well, Frank from PostSecret would say because of the sense of community, not feeling like you're the only one who feels a certain way. (Seriously, before his tours he didn't do anything.) But, because your submissions may not win, I'm going to take it one step farther:

I'm going to share the profit of the book sales with the authors of the books.

I can't say how much, as I really don't know much about the publishing process. I could make the payout percentage based, depending on how much of the story was written. Or I could do flat-rate. Not sure, but that's not going to be an issue for a little while still.

So, that's the idea. A writing site that lets the community actually be a part of something. Being published is one of the biggest rewards an author can have. This is going to make that a possibility for everyone and encourage them to keep working at writing.

It's going to be a game, a challenge, a reward system, a means of expression, all rolled into one.

I'll have more on this for sure. Specifics about the site, stuff like forums, campaigning, alliances, and everything else that could arise. Wednesday (I'm going to adopt a more formal, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, posting calendar) I'll talk on some of the things I'm encountering as a first time web designer in the early stages.