Naming a website is a little tricky. There are a lot of questions to ask yourself– do you want to just go for your real name? What is easy for people to remember, or spell? What will the name bring to mind and say about you?
I debated all these questions for awhile. A lot of writers just use their name… but my name isn’t the easiest to spell out, especially when my nice Polish maiden name “Jarosz” is thrown in there. I wanted to make it easy, keep it simple.
My former website was called “The Sapphire Pen,” and I still really like that. I have been identified with “sapphire” on the web ever since my husband gave it to me for my computer handle back when we were first getting online before there really was an Internet in 1990 or so. Sapphire is my birthstone, and he has one on his wedding band. I like it, and I really thought hard about keeping The Sapphire Pen… ultimately and ironically, it was my husband who discouraged me. Sapphire ends up being a little tricky with the double “p”s. It’s just better to have something simple.
After brainstorming and playing around with combinations, I came up with Pen and Moon. It certainly is easy to spell, and I like that it brings up an image, so maybe it can be easily remembered. I still have a love affair with pens and writing by hand, even though so much writing happens on the computer now. I feel connected to writing in a different kind of way when I’m doing it with a pen on paper.
The moon… well, I have a love affair with her, too! The moon is featured in several of my poems (read a moon poem here), and I just feel a connection and a surge of excitement when I spot the moon in the sky. There’s a big ol’ moon on the cover of my poetry book too (thanks to my daughter who painted that beautiful art for it).
I’m hoping the moon is out tonight for the Northern Spark event… a bunch of artsy and techno activities happening all over Minneapolis throughout the night. Maybe I’ll bring along a pen and notebook to record some of it, too!
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