Blogging 101: Day 2

Assignment dealing with titles and taglines: If you’re already thrilled with your title or you want to do more, feel free to publish a post, too! Let readers know what inspired your title and tagline.

Scribble2: Art by Lenee Cobb

Titles and Taglines

Today on Blogging 101, we are going over titles and taglines. This information is great for those starting a blog. I wish I’d been able to take this course months ago. I figured out how to do go about finding w here to find how to do these things by exploration, trial and error.

• My URL: awritershelper.wordpress.com
• Title: Scribbles to Compositions
• Tagline: Encompassing the spectrum of writing

How I came up with my title

I wanted a title to reflect a mixture of writing and art and i just happened to be messing around with one of my scribble pictures at the time.

Scribble pictures

How many of you remember making scribble pictures in school? I spent fourth grade in a Catholic school in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We used those black and white speckled composition books for our homework and assignments and penmanship. But I, and many of my classmates, also used those composition books to draw and color scribble pictures.

As the sister taught us history and read stories to us, we’d begin by loose-drawing circle eights, over and over and over again and then apply colors to those enclosed spaces between the lines. There was a sort of comradery between the circle-eighters. Inspired by each other, we became more and more elaborate in our designs.

This was not something considered wrong in the classroom. We weren’t distracting other students. We retained what we heard taught. We just doodled while we listened.

I think doodling in class helped me absorb knowledge in the same way an instructional tape might help someone learn if they turn their recorder on while they sleep. Doodling works to help students retain knowledge on a type of subliminal level. I don’t know if there’ve been any studies done on this; I just know it works.

However, much to my shock and horror, I’ve discovered that many classrooms discourage doodling in class. There, in my opinion, lies the root for the “dumbing down of America,” my friends.

Now it’s true, neither you nor I can doodle and write at the same time, yet doodling helps improve handwriting by developing wrist control. Moreover, every artist/sign painter/calligrapher can tell you that wrist control is vital in their work.

Just so, it’s often through our inner ear that we know when the composition of a written work pleases us and we develop this “ear” by listening. Layering our writing, like as if we were using colored pencils or painting in oils or acrylics, creates depth and meaning.

Uncle Tom at the Salmon Cascades. Art by Lenee Cobb. This painting was done on the spot, quickly, to catch the light. The painting might not be perfect, but it was a wonderful day at a spot of many stories.

Let’s think about landscapes for just a moment: If a picture paints a thousand words, what are those words? Every place has many stories to tell. Choose a moment in time, somewhere, and listen to its tales while scribbling.

Absorb.

Play around and experiment a bit.

Compose.

That’s what I hope my blog site reflects within its title and tagline.