True Story from Real Life: A Funny Story About Creating an Online Blog

This true story below is the tale of my first attempt at creating an online blog. Such a venture should have been easy, right? An online blog could run the gamut from mental health advice to humorous anecdotes and memoirs. The blogging site was supposedly user friendly, so it should have been a snap to create an online blog ... or so I thought, as I stepped off into my first adventure in Bloggy Land.

Anyone Can Create an Online Blog!

Blogging-everyone does it. Some are better than others, but, I was certain I could do it, too. Maybe. And so it was with just a small bit of apprehension that I created my first online blog. Well, tried to anyway ....

"The ones that died were the optimists," I heard my husband 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 be linked to other blog sites, which would link to still other blog sites, thus eventually giving me a plethora of readers. Well, at least that was the theory.

My mind brimmed with realism-millions of people blog! It overflowed with optimism-with millions of people doing it, how hard could it be to set up an online blog?

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 and unusable, 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.

Hubby 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: My Blog. 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.

And all that was left now was to find someone to loan me some Botox.

(Disclaimer: This true story is based on the author's real life experience of creating an online blog. Although she has used artistic license to present the story in a humorous manner, the basic facts of the incident have been maintained and the event recounted as she remembers it.)

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A few of my favorite blogs to visit:

On the Couch (Mental health blog by Russ Beck
Write Up My Alley (Humor blog by C.L. Beck)
Randomish (Author's blog by Nichole Giles)
Barnyard of the Tragically Hip (Comic Strip by Sheila)
Rachelle's Writing Spot (Tips and advice from romance author, Rachelle Christensen)
C. LaRene Hall (Travel articles and book reviews by C. LaRene Hall)

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Sources:
Personal experience.