My wife and I once had a friend who had a lot of free time on her hands after work and spent most of it giving the inside of her house a new look. Every time we went over there, the walls and ceilings were adorned with fresh paint and the shelves and tabletops and walls were freshly accessorized like the re-done homes on HGTV. She was constantly bored with the old look so consistenly that when her husband–who traveled on business–came home, he must have wondered if had drunkenly staggered into the wrong house.

When HGTV’s home and hearth designers swoop in and re-do a house, the finishing touch is decorating every thing with knicknacks which–while they give the rooms a high-end look on TV, probably end of in the attic within months because they aren’t the look and feel the homeowners are used to and, when it comes down to it, take up a lot of room.

I wonder if our decorating-oriented friend found a Knicknacks to go kind of business where she could swap out rooms filled with old clutter for brand new clutter.

I take that approach to my blog and website, but prefer that my house looks like my house from month to month and year to year. Writers are supposed to find a niche for every component of their online presence and stay there because, as the gurus tell us, doing that builds audiences. When readers arrive on a site, they know where they are rather than wondering if they typed the URL incorrectly or drunkenly staggered into the wrong online enclave.

If I thought one look and feel forever and ever on my website would sell books, I might keep it. And if I kept it and sold more books, I could afford professional designers to keep each place fresh, yet comforting to readers who like exciting stories in the novels they read while reading them on the same frayed old couch.

I guess I should put a warning on the homepage of my website that says: “Youve probably been here before though you won’t rememeber it because I got bored with the old look again and don’t even recognize this place myself. Get used to it.”

—Malcolm

Click on my name to see what my website looks like today, but maybe not next week.