Musings on writing, design & NYC

I’ve known my blog needed a tagline for some time. It took me almost a year to come up with the name “Sketching A Story,” but a name isn’t necessarily enough for readers to make that immediate connection with what the blog is about. Yes, okay, I have “story” is in the title, but what kind of story? And what does it mean to “sketch” a “story?”

So my tagline has been in the works for the past couple of weeks.  First I just scrolled through my posts to get a better sense of what I write about. I know that sounds crazy, but my blog has changed a lot since I started it about a year and half ago and I wanted to reassess where it’s been and where it’s going.

I write about writing– that’s an obvious one and pretty much the core focus of my site. I write about New York City. I write about college and Notre Dame. I write about being a recent college grad. I write about everyday things that inspire me. I write about things that visually intrigue me– I am fascinated by design, whether it be graphic, website or interior design.

In the end, I chose “writing, design & NYC” to  be the three umbrella categories in my tagline. Now how to link those three words together?  I really didn’t want to go with “thoughts.” So many blogs use the phrases “thoughts on life” or “random thoughts,” which say almost nothing about the blog’s focus. Then I remembered my high school literary magazine, Musings, which I worked on for four years. (I dug up a 2006 copy for the photo above.) “Musings” was perfect. Not much more specific than “thoughts,” but I like to think it’s more literary 🙂

So there it is: Sketching A Story: musings on writing, design & NYC. Nothing revolutionary, but it’s simple and I like it.

Have you ever struggled to define or brand your blog?

Famous writers on writing

“You don’t write because you want to say something. You write because you have something to say.” ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

SOURCE: http://10cities10years.com/

“Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them.  Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.” ~ Truman Capote

SOURCE: http://www.harrysbarvenezia.com/truman_capote.htm

“The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.”   ~ Anais Nin

SOURCE: http://summeranne.tumblr.com/

“When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.” ~ Ernest Hemingway

SOURCE: http://www.listal.com

“Words – so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.” ~Nathaniel Hawthorne

SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org