How To Name a Blog

I don't know about you, but I have a really hard time naming things. I tend to go toward names that are really long and I love them because they're like sentences, which was how I came up with the name of my first blog - Drugs Called Books.

But these type of names also tend to be clumsy and a bit tedious after time. For this blog, I wanted something simpler. Something that will have this punch and would convey everything I want to say about the blog in one simple word.

And for the longest time, I actually wanted to call it THE UNDERWORD. 

You know, like what's under the words? A world for what you can find between the words, of my opinions, of what I truly think. And this just stuck with me. So when I started working with Amanda, the amazing designer for the blog, I told her about this name.

I was really excited for it, too.

But then Amanda asked me some questions. Really important ones.

"If you've got a Pinterest account, making a private board that you can store inspiration onto would be fantastic. When I say inspiration, I mean just anything you like the look of, pin it and collect images that make you feel the things you want to feel about your blog - happy, positive, motivated - just images that you like really...

Choose 7-10 words you want to use to describe your new blog. They could be anything, like: personal, comforting, delicate, bold, powerful, inspiring - just words that you feel would fit your future blog.

Other small things (although important) would be a name [it might be worth brainstorming what you want this new blog to be, thinking of the type of content you want it to have and working that way, I can help with that if you want/need it] so I can practice and play around with different looks.... 

Those things ended up making me understand The Underword was just not the right name for this blog.

First, I started with a Pinterest board for it because, let's be honest, it's just great fun so why the heck not?

As you can see, most of the images I added to this board were dark and going toward the deep blue. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, expect that I realized that this type of feel was, essentially, fantasy. Same as The Underword, with it's obvious Underworld connotation, is very darkly fantastical. 

And I love fantasy... but thinking about the words I wanted to represent my blog, and what I wanted it to be, Amanda's two other requests from me, it just didn't match. Because the words I came up with were personal, versified, inspiring, positive, free style and safe harbor.

I want this blog to be my home away from home, my place to talk about everything and nothing at all - ordinary things that have nothing to do with books, opinions I can't let out anywhere else, inspirations and aggravations and yes, books. Because that's just one of my favorite things in the world. But I don't read just fantasy, either.

I didn't want to limit my blog to something fantastical. And while I loved my original idea of it - of the Underword as this magical place underneath seemingly ordinary stuff, hiding underneath the regular world, no none can deny The Underworld (and by associations The Underword) is dark and gritty, even if what's underneath words and what words create is everything and anything at all.

That's not what this blog is about.

This blog is something open and free and real. 

You can ask Amanda how truly hard it was for me to discard this name. I literally told her I was set on the Underword about a dozen different times, told her this was the name I saw my future blog having in my head, that this is what stuck.

And then one day, I came to her and told her I was going with Afterwords instead.

Simple as that.

Afterwords has a very definitive connotation to reading. But it doesn't have to be - Afterwords are literally words that come after something, which is exactly what I'm doing in this blog. After I read something, watch a show, be in a certain situation, I come here to talk about it.

So those are my words, after the fact.