A few months ago, I decided to tackle “Piece of Advice #3” (of 3,000,000) in C.J. Redwine’s book, Query: Everything You Need to Get Started, Get Noticed and Get Signed. (Link to the book) Though most writers/authors/agents/publishers would most likely agree that no one book can possibly hold ALL the secrets an aspiring author needs to know, this one was very helpful.****

But when it came to Suggestion #3, that each author should have a strong “web presence?” Ack!

Now, bear in mind that I was raised (but not technically born) in the “Interweb Generation.” I grew up learning how to work “the Hotmail”–as my mom calls it–and create hyperlinks in the shape of big, fuzzy bunnies. (That was back when people thought hyperlinks needed to resemble the shape of whichever object you happened to be clicking on. A lot of people probably don’t know that fun fact; but even now if you find yourself on a super old-fashioned website, you can entertain yourself by clicking everything and watching the cursor highlight the entire shape. Or if not entertain, certainly nerd-out like a Rock Star. And ohmygod, that was the longest parenthetical digression of all time.)

Anyway, what was I saying? Oh, yes! WEB PRESENCE. That is the subject of today’s post. (Note to self: never again blog before coffee.)

****BY THE WAY… If you’re not a fan of my occasionally amusing mental wanderings, you might as well just begin reading HERE.>>>

A few months ago, I was faced with the quandary of A) Altering my “existing”–aka Real Life–web presence to suit the “authorly” image I wanted to portray, thus setting the tone for my literary career, or B) Creating an entirely new web persona–or “Websona” if you will–from scratch. In the end, I settled on a fusion between the two; scrubbing my Twitter down until it was moderately shiny and not too militant and/or ranty (with only a polite smattering of curse words), revamping my journal-blog into more of a “How I became the writer I am today” theme, and creating a new Facebook profile that was not linked to my slightly insane family. (Sorry, mom).

But now that I’ve officially embarked on this whole Websona kick, it does tend to feel at times like I’m leading two separate lives; one as “Veronica, the writer” and one as “Veronica, the wife / daughter / sister / friend / volunteer / activist / occasional f-word enthusiast / person on the edge–aka, Veronica Uncut.”

Is this Writerly Websona a lie, I wonder? Or simply, as CJ suggests, the “professional and courteous” version of “Me?”

Weigh in, if you please.

PS – Any editors who are reading this, please try to ignore the overuse of semi-colons and asides. I seem to be having a temporary punctuation fixation.