Let’s say a visitor has come to your author website. Maybe he/she read one of your pieces in a lit mag and wants to learn more about you. Maybe said person is a literary agent who is deciding whether or not you would make a good client. Or maybe said visitor is someone you met on Facebook or someone who was referred to your site by a friend.

The problem is, when your visitors leave your site, they’ll be gone forever—unless you give them a reason to stay connected. Creating an interactive website is key.

In need of a book recommendation? We’ve got you covered! Check out what the WR staff has read & rated by following Writer’s Relief on Goodreads. This week’s books are:

• East, by Edith Pattou

• Dark Places, by Gillian Flynn

• We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency, by Parmy Olson

With the advent of online literary journals, writers seeking reputable and well-known venues to publish their work are no longer confined to print. Online literary magazines are beginning to coexist with (and often take the place of) print magazines, and the result is good news for writers of short stories, essays, and poems.

People who work for a living know that being efficient and productive is not always easy. It can be even harder for writers who attempt to work from home or write at home after work. It’s definitely hard to stay focused sometimes. The risk of procrastination and the temptation to make excuses is part of the writing life.

Sure, we start out with the best intentions and with specific goals in mind—edit a novel, revise an old poem—but we soon find ourselves distracted by any number of things.

We can only hope that those of us who work with computers can be strong and resist the temptations. And distracting temptations there are! Such fabulous, time-wasting activities abound. We can’t resist giving you a small sample.

The Internet and the digital age have revamped almost everything about our world: The way we read books (good-bye, print), listen to music (adios, CDs), get our news (sayonara, newspapers), even changing our language. The Web has added so many new words to our vocabulary. But grammar pundits, who are rigorous about insisting that language rules be logical and consistent, seem to be at odds with the general public, which largely prefers ease and convenience.

So, is it email or e-mail? Web site or website? Online or on-line?