If I was doing this blog again, I probably wouldn’t do it on WordPress.com. I’d probably go ahead and use one of these much more flexible tools (that I only learned about last night) like Squarespace or Strikingly. However, as it currently stands I have about 500 readers who’re subscribed to my blog through WordPress’ internal reader system. And…I worked hard to get those readers. I don’t just want to abandon them. So I will stay at WordPress.com.

But this morning I decided to do something about the crowded look of my blog. Nowadays the trend in web design is towards lighter, cleaner looks. Whereas my old two-column style tried to fit way too much information into too small a space. So I went ahead and browsed WordPress.com’s premium themes and I bought one. And installed it. I have a huge black and white picture of a bird as my header. It has nothing to do with anything, but I like it.

Many of my fellow YA writers have these really striking, flashy pages that they hired someone to do. But I am torn about whether that’s the right thing for me. I feel as though my current web presence is simply, unpretentious, and content-rich. I’ve worked hard to build up Blotter Paper over the last five years, and part of the reason I’ve been able to keep up with it is because managing a site through WordPress.com (rather than hosting my own wordpress install, for instance) is simple enough that I can focus on actually writing posts.

But still, I don’t know. Maybe I do need something that looks a bit more profesh. I will ponder this question.