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Ch-ch-ch-changes

Friday, July 08, 2005
I hate that song.

Anyway, I'm feeling frazzled. My errand list is long and each task on it is time consuming. Our vacation is galloping up to us and Reno comes ever closer. And I'm still chunky.

On top of that, eHarlequin has done some major renovation of its site and I'm, personally, not that happy with the changes. For one thing, one of my very favorite threads -- Struggling Writers -- has been relegated to the Social section. It just doesn't feel right. It feels as if SW has been ... diminished in some way. That now it's just a place for chit-chat, but not for talking about writing. Granted, we do a LOT of chit-chatting in there, but the underlying purpose that binds us all together is that we are Struggling WRITERS. Not Struggling Readers or Women or Moms, which not all of us are. But we are all Writers.

I couldn't care less about the new colors or the new layout or anything like that. And it makes sense to have all discussion about a specific line in one place. It should certainly save the authors in those lines some wear and tear. Now they can be in one area instead of one thread for folks who read the line and one thread for folks who write for the line. I could be totally off base there, though, since I'm not targetting Har/Sil.

But it feels as if eHq is changing its focus to readers and not writers. If that's true, (and I'm not saying it is) they've made two big mistakes.

1) The readers love the Online Read Library and they gutted it. They left one Online Read up per line. It's possible that they're going to build a fresh library, but do brick and mortar libraries toss out all their old books when they get new ones? And because I'm not a techie person, I don't understand how simply keeping stuff in an archive causes so much work, which was the reason they touted for scouring the Library.

2) H/S lives and dies by the quality of its writers, right? And they say they're always looking for something new and fresh. But if they're going to cut out the writing discussions, then aren't they shooting themselves in the foot? Yes, they've left the BIAY threads and articles, but there's more to writing for H/S than is contained in those articles and guidelines, isn't there? Even the Q&As are gone. Well, actually, they've been divided up by line, which is extremely illogical. For instance, take a Q&A about Alpha males. They moved it to Blaze, but don't they think that people who write for Intrigue want to know about them? Honestly, it made more sense to keep all the Q&As together. That way, a writer who wants to learn about their craft in a well-rounded way can pick and choose a subject without spending an hour rounding up all the different topics the sessions covered.

BTW, as I've been writing this, Jayne the Uber-Hostie is considering putting the Writing Techniques and Grammar Girl threads in a non-line-centric location. Whew! Call me a squeaky wheel -- at least I got some grease!

Edit: YAY!! More grease! There's now a board called The Write Stuff that will not only contain Techniques and Grammar, but cross link to writer's discussions for different lines, as well as link to all the Q&As!! The eHq hosties are AWESOME!!!
7/08/2005 11:19:00 AM : : Sela Carsen : : 3 Comments

3 Comments:

eHarlequin made changes in their website? Uh... I didn't notice it. I don't go there regularly either, but I was expecting something more noticeable.

By Blogger Silma, at 4:23 PM  

I haven't been there in a while. I might have to go check that out.

By Blogger Dana, at 5:02 PM  

Alison's right. Links from the author's sites take you right to their Online Reads. But I have no clue how to get there from the eHq site. *sigh* It's still a little glitchy and now it's the weekend, so the slicing and dicing will just have to wait until next week.

But I'm still a happy camper that they got the writing discussions back up!

By Blogger Sela Carsen, at 10:27 PM  

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