Please Excuse the Mess

Any author who tells you they got into writing so they could design and maintain a website is lying to you. We want to create stories and characters that compel, illuminate, entertain. I dare say most of us—myself chief among them—don’t know squat about website design. Most of us also haven’t made the kind of money writing that we can hire the experts. So you’ll have to forgive me if mine appears like the internet equivalent of the Lascaux cave drawings. And I ask you to imagine that hard-hat illustration one sees on those websites “still under construction” is emblazoned on every page here. I am learning.

My aim will be to post to this blog periodically—once every month or two at most, probably—to give updates and let people know what’s on my mind. Maybe it’ll be on craft. Maybe it’ll be my thoughts on a book or crime fiction or literature at large. (Yes, I read widely.) Maybe it’ll be about my own struggles. I’m a relatively new author, and there will be many firsts for me in the next year. First developmental editing with my publisher. First book marketing campaign. First foray into Twitter and other forms of social media I have, until now, stridently avoided. But I’ll be open about it. Even the mistakes. Perhaps other new-ish writers can glean lessons from mine and save themselves some hassle and embarrassment.

To that end: If you’re a fiction writer or aspire to it and have questions, I’ll give you the best answers I have. They may be bad answers. I may think differently in a year. But they’ll be honest, good-faith responses. So reach out. Writing is a lonely exercise, but you’re not alone in it.

Now go write something good.

Matt

@cmattwrite

cmattsmithwrites@gmail.com