Daughter: Mum, your website’s crap.

Me: Really?

Daughter: Like, seriously. Way too much text.

Me: But I’m a writer…

Daughter: So what? People don’t want to read all of that. Don’t want to scroll all day long. Just get to the point.

My daughter’s been telling me this for ages. I won’t say how long because I feel embarrassed to admit how resistant I was to her critique. I thought every word on my website had its justification and I thought my website was better than many I had browsed. But she insisted: it was crap. She hated the colour of the background. ‘Keep it simple, mum!’ She found the texts too high-brow and long-winded. She hated my book covers. Somewhere in me a voice was saying, what do you care, she’s not your target audience anyway. Somewhere else another voice was saying: she may have a point. Step one, treat yourself to a professional cover designer. Step two, it’s a website, not a novel. To cut a long story short, my daughter won. And do you know what? I’m glad she did.