My Website, Myself

Daum, Meghan. "My Website, Myself" July 27th, 2004, 11:45AM http://www.meghandaum.com

Meghan's website article tells about the struggles she faced personally and as a professional writer in creating a website for her work. As she worried about how to present herself, she wondered if she might find herself creating another person entirely. While she told us how much effort went into her decisions, she lamented that her site came up short in comparison to other websites. Ms. Daum realized the importance of creating a website for herself and her work. She states that it is "an opportunity for creative people to explain ourselves, to set the record straight, to recreate our images by suggesting that we are in fact something entirely different from what our publicist, agent or mother assumes us to be." But she worries that writers don't entirely trust the reader to understand on their own, that they perhaps need a "reader's guide". Meghan expresses lament about a time when written ideas "resided soley in the work itself".
Meghan writes about her worries in describing not only herself but also her work. She wants to present the real picture on her website but has found out how difficult that can be. What has not changed is that "all artists grapple with the fallout of presenting work to the public...The value of artists websites will probably remain, like the work itself, in the eye of the beholder".
I feel Meghan may have come to grips with the concerns she had about creating a website for her work. She knows that no matter what her site looks like, she will always find a better one. As a writer, she faces the same lack of control all writers face regarding how well her work will be understood and received. She sees the website as a way not only to promote but to help readers understand her work. In the end, however readers will see what 'they' see and interpret in their own minds. And Meghan is who she is,no matter how others see her on her website. And she can live with that.