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"Li Yun Alvarado's course, You Need a Website, is a game changer.
In the year (2020) of confusion, cloudy thinking, terror, rage and lethargy, Li Yun's course gave me direction, purpose, permission to fail, AND permission to succeed at some small things, while all the big things fell to shit around me.
When I listened to her, I said very emphatically, "I don't want to do this."
The questions she poses before you even start were the game changers for me. They asked me to claim my life as a writer.
I had published, written a dissertation, and just submitted my novel after several revisions to my agent in August of 2020 and I was STILL having difficulty laying claim to this life, this title.
Li Yun's advice to do it as a first draft, knowing all the while that the website would change over time, gave me the push I needed. The five questions gave me access to the deeper reasons this would be so important.
After years of hesitation, I made my website in less than a week.
I went with simple, and very purposefully rough draft, with the understanding that it could not be more "rough draft" than what I had online at that point: Facebook and Instagram. I published it. I shared it as per her instructions.
Within a week I was doing a Zoom reading and someone asked for my website to post on the promotions, I would have been the only writer without one, had I not done the course!
The fall of 2020 into the spring of 2021 turned into one of the biggest transitions of my writing life as my novel made the rounds at editorial houses and an excerpt was published in an online journal, and all of it led readers to my website.
It became a place editors, producers and readers went to get to know me, and some even mentioned things they saw there in our meetings. I received an email to submit work through the website.
Now, I finally understood why "I Needed a Website."
It became an archive, a flag planted in the ground of my writing life, and a central location where I could direct the narrative about myself and my writing.
Thank you Li Yun for taking the time and energy to apply your depth of wisdom and intelligence to this course and sharing it.
Every writer needs a website, but before you hire someone to make it, take this course so you understand from the inside out why you need it in the first place and what it should help you feel, think and say about yourself and your writing."
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