I LOVE TO BLOG—BUT TRULY HATE THE WORD ‘BLOG.’
I THOUGHT I WOULD GET USED TO IT—BUT I HAVEN’T. NONETHELESS, I SEEM TO BE STUCK WITH IT.
One of the things that I have learned as a writer—and here I am talking about fiction for the moment—is that if I chose the wrong name for a character, I find it very hard to develop him or her.
Somehow, words need to fit one’s mental image—whether we are talking about a person, a place, or really anything. The issue isn’t just meaning—because someone’s name doesn’t necessarily have to mean anything in itself (except to convey a sense of identity) but some intangible sense of rightness. Some things just look right (as in the saying about aircraft “If it looks right, it will fly right). Others (as in a snake emerging from a toilet bowl) do not. They strike a discordant note—which is a polite way of saying blind panic if you happen to be sitting on the loo at the time.
And, yes, I did once sit on a snake—which was sunning itself on a rock in Cyprus—but that’s another story—and at least I was wearing my trousers. The snake, by the way, was completely naked!
I heard the snake toilet bowl story from a master at school. He had lived in India for many years and swore, not just that a snake really could navigate a water filled u-bend (apparently true) but that such an incident had happened to him (the jury is out). What I can say is that visits to the toilet, by those of us who heard the story, dropped dramatically for some weeks.
But, I digress.
What I am really endeavoring to do is to communicate the sad fact that although I truly love blogging these days (I hated it initially and took some time to come around) I remain uncomfortable with the terminology.
Does it matter?
It concerns me—just a little—that I haven’t been able to come up with a more evocative alternative.
I’m working on it.
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