{"id":22903,"date":"2017-04-02T13:36:52","date_gmt":"2017-04-02T20:36:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=22903"},"modified":"2017-04-02T13:36:52","modified_gmt":"2017-04-02T20:36:52","slug":"the-pleasure-and-pain-of-starting-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=22903","title":{"rendered":"The Pleasure and Pain of Starting Over"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the things I decided to do when I signed with Guernica Editions<\/a> to publish my second full-length book of poetry was totally revamp my website, not just its look, but its organization and content as well. I\u2019ve been blogging on WordPress since 2004, when my first book of translations<\/a> was published, but my \u201conline face,\u201d as it were, has always been the face of the blog. Whatever I\u2019ve accomplished as a writer\u2014the books and other work I\u2019ve published, the interviews I\u2019ve given, news coverage I\u2019ve gotten\u2014all of that and more was pretty much hidden behind the\u00a0far-more-complex-than-necessary network of menus and links that had evolved over the years. I wanted to take the opportunity this new book would offer me to create a website where it would be much easier for people to find out who I am and what I\u2019ve done as a writer,<\/em> not just as a blogger\u2014and that would also allow me to keep the website up to date in a more organized and efficient way than I\u2019ve been able to do in the past.<\/p>\n

Making this happen was not a simple process, as it required me to gather and organize everything I\u2019ve done dating back to 1989, when I published my first article<\/a> in the-unfortunately-long-defunct Changing Men.<\/em> Then, because I didn\u2019t have the money to pay a web designer to redo my website for me, I needed to find a WordPress theme that was not only easy on the eyes, but also powerful and flexible and easy enough to learn that I could manage it all by myself. ((I chose Writer<\/a>, by Acora Themes. I recommend them highly; their customer service is wonderful.)) Finally, I needed to figure out how to structure the site to accomplish what I wanted, and then I had to take the time build it.<\/p>\n

I relaunched the website<\/a> some weeks ago, and I am very happy with the results, even the fact that I screwed up entirely the process of transferring my blog posts from the old site to the new one. That might seem an odd thing to say, especially since I\u2019ve written more than ten years worth of content, but the screw up has given me a chance to look through what I\u2019ve written and to think more clearly and systematically than I have ever done before about my blog\u2019s content\u2014especially now that it is not merely a personal blog. So, I have been reading through my old posts to see which ones I think are worth reposting, which ones I will archive because I might some day have use for them, and which ones I will consign to the trash. The first three reposts (1<\/a>, 2<\/a>, 3<\/a>) are relatively recent ones that tell the story of my experience with antisemitism from third through twelfth grades\u2014the kind of thing I think it has become ever more important to talk about since the campaign and election of Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

To put all this another way, I am in the process of reinventing my online presence from top to bottom. There are still some finishing touches to put on the website, and then, once those are done, I will start to look really critically at how I use and how I want to use social media. I don\u2019t, however, want to get ahead of myself, so I will stop there and share with you some happy publication news:<\/p>\n