I sent out about twenty-five e-mails this week to my friends who live outside of Sonoma to let them know about Pearls My Mother Wore making it to market: Florida, Missouri, New Mexico, Virginia, LA, all over the place. Before I get swept up in local activities, I wanted to make sure they were notified. In each of my e-mails, and these are to my friends mind you, I specifically asked them to say a little something on this blog to get it going. Almost everybody replied enthusiastically to my e-mail, but they didn’t post on this here little blog. So, basically, my blog threw a party, and only a couple people came.
Hum, that’s interesting, I thought. I know everyone is pretty much jazzed about the book, so what’s with the blog? So I asked. It turns out blog is not in fact a household word (yet) and many of my friends found the forum off putting. We’re not twenty-somethings, or even thirty-somethings. We’re forty, fifty, sixty, and even a couple of seventy-somethings.
After giving this some thought, I could see their point. I have a “members only” blog that I contribute to somewhat regularly, so I’m used to the format, but if you’ve never done blogging, it can be mystifying. I took a closer look at this WordPress blog and realised, for the uninitiated, the info boxes at the very beginning are a big turn-off.
Let’s start with the “Name” box. I wouldn’t want my name going out across the big, wide, world-web, except in my case it has to if I want to be recognized as the author of the novel, the whole reason for this blog. The thing is, “Name” can be any name you chose: a handle, a pet-name, a nickname, a place, or just some random word. It doesn’t have to be the name on your birth certificate.
Next is ”Address.” I can’t control the labels on these boxes, but if I could, that box would be labeled “e-mail” or “e-mail address,” because that is exactly what the box is looking for. Personally, I’m much freer with my e-mail address than I am with my home address. I would never post my home address on a public blog, it doesn’t matter how good a friend I am to the blog host. “Address” would have me clicking off the site faster than you can say blogosphere. The lesson is that “Name” and “Address” don’t mean what they used to. I’m not going to think about that too hard, good or bad, it is what it is.
Then finally, “URL web-address.” If you have a website, this is where you get to advertise it. If you don’t, then you can leave the box blank. But see for me, and I suspect many of you, this goes against our grain. We want to get all of the answers right; leaving a question unanswered is just wrong. I know! Try to breath through it.
A big thanks to the first three to post comments on the “Hello World!” piece, Genevieve, divodi, and Patricia. Thanks for sharing some love!
On a scale of one to ten, I give this first week an eight. That’s an average between a ten for my e-mail enthusiastic responders, and a six for the timid blog action.
With or without “comments,” I’ll post again next Friday.
