Sassy Answers: Changing words

Dear Readers,

A lot of you have a story to tell and write to ask me questions about what it takes to write a blog.   It’s a lot of work, but for many of us, writing is not an option.  I have to write.  I started a diary when I was twelve, and have been writing about my life and loves in various formats ever since!  Sharing it with THE ENTIRE INTERNET can be time-consuming and scary, but the rewards are wonderful.  I get to interact with other bloggers and readers!!  The questions can be quite specific, like this one:

Q.  In order to stay anonymous, do you replace words and edit out details when writing posts for your blog?

A.  Yes!

Everyone thinks of having to change names… but there’s more.  Names, locations, work details – here’s the list of nearly two dozen keywords for entries about my old flame that have to be changed for a start, and I catch others as I transfer them into posts.  Thank goodness for “find and replace” feature in my word processing program!

Actual                                 Gets replaced with

Philip’s real first name             Philip
Philip’s real nickname              Phil
My real first name                   Sassy
Phillip’s nickname for me         Sass
Another pet name for me         Sass
Philip’s wife’s first name           His wife or My wife
My husband’s first name           Hubby
My last name                           blank
Philip’s last name                     blank
Philip’s favorite football team    My team, his team      
Military buzz words                  military (or non-branch specific or edited)
Names/ranks of his bosses         Bigwigs
My employer’s name                 removed
My project                               edit
His branch of the military          edit
His children’s names                 edit or remove entire reference
His other family members         edit or remove entire reference
My other family members         Sis, niece or whatever
His other ladies’ names             Beach Gal or Fred
Our hometown name                our hometown
Where I live                             remove details to generic Boston
Where he lives                         fix it to something else like my area etc. 
Details of his work                    delete
Details of my work                    edit or delete 
My adventures with the AM men bring on a whole other list of changes!  It’s fun to come up with nicknames and re-spin their stories so even they would not recognize themselves!  
I try to keep the flow of the sentence but you can probably tell most of the time when I am changing and editing.  It makes me sad to take out some stories, especially about his great work for this country, or my cool projects, but they aren’t what this story is about.  And I want you to be able to fill in your details, make this about your people, so too many specifics don’t help with that.  Some diligence to cover my details makes it easy to share the sexy stuff!  
-Sassy

One thought on “Sassy Answers: Changing words

  1. My momma always told me stupid is as stupid does so my best cover is being myself day to day. That way nobody would ever believe I could piece together a full coherent sentence, let alone a blog! 🙂

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