Monday, May 12, 2008

Your LDS Neighborhood -What If It's Boring?

Tomorrow will be my two-week anniversary. Yes, I set my blog up almost two weeks ago, and I’m still in love with it. But, lest you think it was an easy relationship, let me tell you how it started. . .

“The ones that died were the optimists,” I heard my husband, Russ, say to my son on the phone. I found myself hoping he was in reference to someone other than guests who ate my cooking. As it turned out, he was talking about prisoners of war. It seems the ones who did the best in difficult conditions were the realistic optimists.

As a realistic optimist, I felt encouraged by that thought. It meant I was bound to succeed with my latest brilliant scheme—my own author’s blog site, which would eventually be linked to Your LDS Neighborhood.com, a site for Latter-day Saints with wholesome, intelligent articles, and innovative products and services.

My mind brimmed with realism—millions of people blog! It overflowed with optimism—with millions of people blogging, how hard could it be to set it up?

Russ and I sat down together to work on it. The first thing the site building program wanted to know was a name. “Which name?” I asked Russ. “My full name, last name, pen name or a name for the blog?”

He drummed his fingers lightly on the keyboard. “I don’t know; just give it any name and we’ll change it later, if necessary.”

“No! What if I name it something boring and it’s locked in for eternity?” My voice rose in panic; my blood pressure shot up and my face turned red at the thought. Either that or I had a hot flash. Regardless, I did not want to end up with a site named something really mundane, like “My Space.”

After pondering for a few minutes, I picked “The Write Stuff.” I thought it was unique. Yahoo thought there were 456 million other people already using that name.

My husband liked “Writer’s Cramp”, which according to another search on the venerable Yahoo only had 448, 000 entries. Unfortunately, the word "cramp" made me think of female troubles, so we tossed it out, too. Searching “writer’s cramp” wasn’t time wasted, however. Yahoo said that writer’s cramp could be cured with a shot of Botox. Ooo, how handy, erase my wrinkles and cure a muscle spasm in one swift injection. I filed the information away in my brain.

Russ became bored with the naming process, opened another screen on his laptop and began playing a game where squatty little people shot at each other and screamed as they died. It made matters worse. I started coming up with names like, “Point Your Gun Write at Me” and “Blood Running in the Streets” … which, in case you didn’t notice, doesn’t even have the word “write” in it.

After an hour of trying different monikers, I finally came up with a decent one for the site—Write Up My Alley. At least, it seemed decent. If not, it was just too bad, because after trying out names for an hour, my hand was locked in a writer’s cramp.

It was worth all that searching, though. I’d figured out what worked and what didn’t.

All that was left was to find someone to loan me some Botox.

What's playing on my radio: Nothing
What's playing on my TV: Nothing

What's playing in my head: Love Will Keep Us Together by Captain and Tennille

(Return to Your LDS Neighborhood!)

This blog sponsored by Your LDS Neighborhood, and originally posted at Write Up My Alley 1 on 05-12-08.

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