The Secret Power of Names

Names have been on my mind lately. Not only character names and the importance of choosing the right one (I cannot begin a story without it and will spend literally hours perusing baby name books, websites, and other references on name characteristics before choosing one–assuming that I don’t start with the name and develop the story from there), not only the issue of having a catchy title for your manuscript (especially when preparing for submission for publication or agent searching). What has really been hitting me lately is the importance of the name of your blog. Now there are several schools of thought out there on this one. Many people simply use their name. This is a great way for readers who have heard of you to track you down online and read your little pearls of wisdom. But what about those of us who are, as yet, unpublished? What brings people to our blogs? Other than friendly links from other sites? I routinely prowl around industry blogs and other author blogs and taking a look at their lists of links. I just added Murderati and A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing to my blogroll from other sites linking them. The latter has an extensive list of links that I zipped through in a hit or miss fashion, as I’m not so deep into procrastination mode that I clicked on every one. What I have noticed this morning is that I tend to skip over the ones that are just names (no offense to those of you who choose that route), and go for the ones with catchy or at least curiosity piquing titles. It is certainly likely that I’m missing a number of blogs that I would find fascinating, entertaining, and interesting (content being another important aspect to garnering readers, which I will endeavor to cover at a later date), but there you have it. And so I return to the conclusion I already made that I need a new title for my blog. I didn’t have any lightning bolts of inspiration when I moved over here to WordPress, so Paper Wings was convenient–never intended to last. But I haven’t gotten that bolt of inspiration yet either, so it hasn’t changed yet. I will keep brainstorming and am open to anyone’s suggestions.