My Wife’s Tenacity

The people who are publishing my book tell me that I simply have to have a website. The fact that I already have a blog is nice, but not sufficient, I’m told with regularity. No, I need a stand alone Author website. Once my book goes live it will be the perfect place for people to go to buy the thing, they say. Plus, I am constantly reminded that whenever someone buys my book on my author website I make much more money per book than I will if they buy it on Amazon or Kindle. Of course, creating and maintaining a proper website isn’t cheap. In addition I know less than nothing about how to create a website on account of the fact that I’m an idiot. When my wife found out how much it was going to cost me to have someone make a website for me she said something like, “Are you kidding? I could figure it out. Let me do it.”

This was three or four weeks ago. Ever since, Pam has been laboring late into the night essentially teaching herself how to create a website, something I could have done if I wasn’t lazy and impatient. Instead, although she has other much more fun things she could be doing, she has been trial and erroring her way through learning a new skill for three weeks. Last night she finally showed me what she has come up with. 

So here’s the thing with Pam. She is a natural with the computer, but this process was completely different than anything she had ever attempted to do before and it was quite frustrating for her. It was the exact opposite of intuitive. I suspect that these website construction services are deliberately obtuse and clunky so novices will throw their hands up in frustration and say, “To hell with this, I’ll just pay them a gazillion dollars to do it for me!” But these people never met my wife. When it comes to difficult tasks, Pam is tenacious. The more difficult it gets the more determined she becomes to figure it out. Instead of losing her patience like her husband would do, she doubles down on stubbornness.

The site went live last night but I will not give out the address just yet because she says there are still things she needs to do. But I can tell you this…its so much better than what I was picturing it would be in my head. I love it, actually. She made it easy to navigate and super easy to buy the book. Once again, I am in her debt. I’ll just add it to everything else I owe her.