The Journal: A Few Changes to the Journal

In today’s Journal

* A Few Changes to the Journal
* Of Interest

A Few Changes to the Journal

Mostly I’m posting this to get the “Of Interest” items out to you.(grin)

A reader accidentally unsubscribed yesterday and asked me to add him back to the list. I tried to add the subscriber again, but MailChimp wouldn’t allow it. Since he unsubscribed, he has to resubscribe himself. (I’m not sure why they made me click a box that said I had his permission to add him if they weren’t going to believe me.)

So I was going to email him to tell him he had to resubcribe himself, but when I started to include the link to make it easier for him, I realized there wasn’t a prominent subscription button on the Journal website. Sigh.

I finally found the subscription URL at MailChimp and added a new menu item (Subscribe) first. But that started the ball rolling and I decided to trim down the Journal a little. The whole thing is now the width of the header image (1100 pixels). The sidebar is a little narrower too, and I also changed the content of the sidebar.

First, I removed the glaring Donate button and put it at the bottom of the Patronage page, then relabeled that menu tab slightly.

The sidebar still contains the search bar. You can also search via the small spy-glass icon in the upper right corner of the site. But now the sidebar also contains a list of recent posts, then recent comments, and finally the Journal Archives.

(You can also still find the free, downloadable and searchable PDF copies of the Journal Archives by clicking the Journal Archives tab in the menu.)

The Word for Writers tab is new on the menu. It links to a series of instructional blog posts on how best to use the tools and tricks of Microsoft Word. Any other changes to the site are minimal, but feel free to look around.

By the way, if you like to measure things on the screen either for design purposes or just out of curiosity, there’s an excellent on-screen pixel ruler available at https://www.pixelruler.de/e/index.htm. It only costs 4.95 €, or about $5.16, and it’s actually accurate. Just sayin’.

Talk with you again soon.

Of Interest

See “Too Much In One Day” at https://www.deanwesleysmith.com/too-much-in-one-day/. Just in case it gives you some ideas.

See “How to Write a Fight Scene With Carla Hoch” at https://killzoneblog.com/2022/05/how-to-write-a-fight-scene-with-carla-hoch.html. At Amazon I was able to find only a few novels by Ms. Hoch. Knowing how to fight and knowing how to write a fight scene in a novel are two different things. Just sayin’. I recommend a pinch of salt with this one.

Disclaimer: In this blog, I provide advice on writing fiction. I advocate a technique called Writing Into the Dark. To be crystal clear, WITD is not “the only way” to write, nor will I ever say it is. However, as I am the only writer who advocates WITD both publicly and regularly, I will continue to do so, among myriad other topics.