Once in a blue moon, I find myself rereading old research papers, stories, and essays I wrote from various stages of my writing career. If I can help it, I try not to resurface these pieces because I cannot help but be repulsed by the works that I once believed were good. And they were good. At the time, anyway. But as Robert Frost once said, “Nothing gold can stay,” and writing is not an exception. In his Why I Write, George Orwell concisely explains, “In any case I find that by the time you have perfected any style of writing, you have always outgrown it,” (Orwell). Even the most celebrated authors face a similar dilemma as I. My standards have undeniably changed as I age. William Hazlitt would argue similarly: most things have some sort of expiration date, whether it be the love for a favorite book or even friendships. “Times are changed,” Hazlitt states in On the Pleasure of Hating (Hazlitt 3). “Our honeymoon…must come to an end; and is followed by indifference, if not by disgust,” (Hazlitt 5). And through this process of creating Alkive, I have concluded that falling out of love with the old is okay. Though my past writing may make me physically cringe, writing is fluid and evolving.
Perfection cannot exist in writing for this reason. Yet, it’s precisely imperfection which makes writing a beautiful craft.
Why hide the parts of my writing history which were steppingstones to my current writing style? Hence, Alkive was conceived: Alena’s archive on full display. A final memoir on the literature of my teenage years, a digital collection that I may look back upon to marvel, and perhaps loathe, as my writing matures.
My greatest challenge when fabricating Alkive was my own lack of objection. I mulled for quite some time over how I can strike a balance between following website design conventions while still maintaining my personality. Initially, I was intimidated by the “laws” of web creation: accessibility, legibility, navigation, aestheticism, the list continues. All these concepts felt constrictive. How could I be expected to communicate myself wholly and authentically when I must place a seemingly disproportionate amount of concern for my audience and my content? Repeatedly, I had been taught the rhetorical triangle was equilateral; so why did it seem so scalene when it came to web design? “To compromise what makes my work representative of me would be a disservice to myself,” was the excuse I told myself for regarding these theories as suggestions instead of expectations. Thus, I commenced toying with the layout, font, color scheme, and visuals of my website for an egregious number of hours. However, I was left unhappy and dissatisfied after every version of Alkive I produced. Some iterations were a horrendous cacophony of colors, and other iterations drowned in pictures I added because I determined that their prettiness was enough justification to include them. With every trial it felt like I strayed further and further from what I wanted my website to look like…but, what exactly was I striving for? I halted my editing process for one day as I pondered the one question that I never thought to ask myself.
How do I want to portray my work, and by extension, myself?
Here I was, concerning myself with feeling limited by these “restraints” when I had not even given myself any direction as to what I wanted to achieve. Consequently, I tested a variety of themes I found appealing until I settled on one which suited me best. Ultimately, I realized these “rules” are not limiting; I was limiting myself by not leading with any goals. Instead, these conventions are oddly liberating to some degree. Design principles are established for the benefit of all three focuses of the rhetorical elements; they are meant to work with me, not against me. Therefore, when I follow the fundamentals, content is clearly communicated, the audience is more engaged, and I can demonstrate my credibility and identity as an author (Klein and Shackelford 348). This vital shift in perspective enabled me to make a website which successfully portrayed my personal tastes while also catering to the readers’ experience viewing my work.
If it wasn’t clear enough through the chosen photos, art museums are a great inspiration for how I organized my website. Galleries immediately come to mind when I consider an environment which effectively displays information and visuals. Artwork is tastefully arranged to not overwhelm visitors, and plaques, signs, or audio guides complement them without outshining the pieces. My process for mapping my website parallels art museums’ techniques, except in the opposite way. The visual components are supplements to my writing; their purpose is to enhance my text, not overwhelm it. Moreover, art itself is incredibly meaningful to me. Ergo, another question presented itself:
How can I intertwine my love of art to enrich my writing?
Excluding the artworks implemented as the featured images on my blog posts (which were chosen to fit the various topics of them), all other pieces utilized as decoration throughout the website hold personal significance to me. In the same way the website acts as an archive for my written work, it also features pictures which connect to my specific memories. For example, “The Accolade” by Edmund Blair-Leighton (featured on the home page) dutifully hangs over my parents’ bed. On the nights when I would be too afraid to sleep alone because of the dark (which I recount in my blog post titled, “Nyctophobia”), I would retreat to the master bedroom. Here upon entering, my eyes always seemed to wander to this striking image which was lightly illuminated by the streetlight creeping in from the curtains. Its stateliness gave me a peculiar feeling of courage—sometimes I would even find the strength to quietly return to my room where I had just come. Similarly, “The Kiss” by Gustav Klimt (home page)—it’s my mother’s favorite artwork, and by association, it’s also one of my favorites. Her interest in art contributed to my own passion for art from a young age which I am incredibly grateful for being introduced to. In the same way art tells a story, which includes the meaning within the artists’ intention and the importance it holds to me as an audience member, I want my writing to be equally characteristic of me and resonate with my own audience. Accordingly, relatability has been a strong value I have sought to include in my work, which I attempt to achieve through personal anecdotes (which are also enjoyable reflections into my memory archive).
Overall, the development of Alkive taught me invaluable lessons about writing. First, writing is a skill. Yes, a seemingly obvious statement, but it is crucial to register this truth; writing as a skill means it is perpetually a work in progress. The work I am proud of today will be something I can improve upon tomorrow, a month from now, and years later (a revelation I stumbled upon in my blog post titled, “Inside Me Are Two Wolves…”). While my current self may find my older work distasteful, they are a precious reminder of where I started and how my voice has transformed as I age. Additionally, I learned the importance of reaching an equilibrium between how I present myself as a writer and maintaining an intelligible reading experience for my audience. As Orwell emphasizes, good writers must find the middle ground between writing solely to satisfy “individual ambition” and “living chiefly for others,” (Orwell). Only then can writers reach their full potential: being able to write about something valuable to them and successfully communicate to others why they should care, too. Finally, when it comes to applying this idea into web design, one must consider what distinguishes themselves from other designers and how they can use visual rhetoric to display their work in the most constructive way possible. Personally, I found that mimicking the aesthetic choices of art museums fulfilled my vision of representing myself while remaining conscious of accessibility. Like all writing, Alkive as a literary collection will always be unfinished in some regard. As technology progresses and my own style morphs, Alkive will inevitably become dated. However, this reminds me that the act of writing is timeless because it can never reach finality. Therefore, may writers continue to strive for unattainable excellence for the sake of becoming the best communicators they can be. This is my purpose as my archive grows into a perfectly imperfect collection of me.
Works Cited
Hazlitt, William. On the Pleasure of Hating. Penguin, 2004.
Klein, Michael J., and Kristi L. Shackelford. “Beyond Black on White: Document Design and Formatting in the Writing Classroom.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Parlor Press, 2011, pp. 333-349.
Orwell, George. “Why I Write.” The Orwell Foundation, The Orwell Foundation, 2023, https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/why-i-write/.