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!
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! 🙂