Welcome! Whether you’re a newcomer or one of the original readers of my previous blog, The Red Angel, I’m so excited to have you visiting my new writer website! Earlier this year, many of my friends started asking me, “I haven’t seen a post from you in forever. How come you stopped blogging?”

I graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in May. During the last two years of college, I changed not only as a person but also as a writer. My writing style became more flexible, my dreams and goals shifted, even parts of my personality were different. With my mind focused on potential careers for myself and a network of people close to me who taught me to be more confident in my abilities, it felt like my identity was no longer in sync with my blog. I felt lost.

I started toying with the idea of re-creating my blog. It never occurred to me that I would get tired of the layout of my last blog, but I was. I wanted to start fresh, to re-brand my social media presence and really invest in my personal writing career. Finally, at the end of my college graduation, I decided it was time for me to take a leap of faith and believe in myself enough to create what you now see in front of your eyes.

Here at Wendy Lu Writes, I will be continuing the blog I started back in 2009 (older posts from The Red Angel have been migrated to this site) by featuring new personal essays and lifestyle articles every week. The website layout was designed by the one and only Kimberly Li, who is a phenomenal graphic designer and an incredibly good friend of mine. She turned my basic ideas – I told her I wanted modern, organized and professional – into a beautiful design that encompasses so much of my personality as well as a dab of the old Red Angel look, namely the crimson butterfly. Philip Jewell is the coding genie who brought Kim’s design to life, and helped to make my blog concept a reality. I could thank Kim and Philip a million times for taking a chance on me and my website, which was only a vague idea in my head just a few months ago, and it wouldn’t be enough.

So what you can expect from Wendy Lu Writes? The website is broken down into three different categories:

Within the first five minutes of an introductory conversation with me, you’ll find out that writing is my number one passion and the reason for everything that I do. Thus, Writing Remarks is the main driver of the website; you’ll find all everything you ever want to know about the lifestyle of a writer (including how-to posts), my personal writing journey, book recommendations, author interviews and guest posts from fellow writers.

Topics include journalism, copy editing, media ethics, blogging, social media and literature. If you would like to write a guest post on one of these topics for Writing Remarks, please email me at wendyluwrites@gmail.com with your pitch. Articles will be posted on Mondays.

Inspired by my favorite magazine, The SELF Diet is the lifestyle branch of my blog and chronicles my culinary adventures. This is where I try out recipes by SELF Magazine and post additional food features such as drink/meal pairings, recipe experiments and meals for special occasions.

In addition to food, this section covers movies, travel, beauty/fashion and pop culture. The SELF Diet as a whole aims to redefine what it means to be a bon vivant and to inspire readers to look for happiness everywhere. Articles will be posted on Tuesdays.

Back in college, I took two seminar courses as part of the North Carolina Fellows, a phenomenal four-year leadership program that readers hear me talk about a lot. An integral part of the courses was “Chautauqua time,” in which two or three students were allotted 20 minutes to sit in front of room and talk about their lives or whatever was on their mind – stories, worries, hopes, dreams, childhood, etc. (the word was also used in “Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” one of the summer reading assignments for the courses). I hope to give you the same kind of authenticity and “realness” in my own Chautauquas on this blog. Articles will be posted on Thursdays starting tomorrow.

It is with immense gratitude and pleasure that I am launching this website today. Thank you to all of my friends and family, and to all the literary bloggers out there who continue to inspire me. If you’d like, please subscribe to my monthly email newsletter by clicking on the “Subscribe” button to your left on the homepage. You can also find me practically anywhere on social media with the username wendyluwrites. Thank you so much for being here, and I can’t wait until next time!