So…funny story.

Remember when I asked you all to vote on a blog title last week? Well, I really meant it. I promise I did. But the plain ol’ truth is that I’m terrible with titles. After asking around and searching all over the internet, these five were the best I could come up with:

HappyWritings
StoryCraftHQ
WriteBetterStories
ArtofWriting
PenandPublish

To be honest, I wasn’t totally sold on any of them. But after hours and hours of trying to come up with something better, I decided that maybe I’d grow to love one of these. Everyone on the poll voted for StoryCraftHQ, and I agreed it was the one I liked best.

So, there I was. I had the domain pulled up. I even put it in my cart. But then, something inside me whispered, “Try one more time.”

All it took was one more search. One minute later, I saw it, and I knew:

The Story Canvas.

Without hesitation, I bought the domain. I could feel in my bones that it was the title I’d been searching for all along. Not only is it a unique phrase, but a title that pulls in my love for art and the wonderful relationship between art and writing, something that speaks of messy, beautiful creativity.

It just goes to show you that you can plan all you want, but sometimes, when you’re down to the wire, you just have to go with your gut. You can have the most beautiful, expansive outline in the world, but sometimes in the middle of writing you’ll feel like you need to take one of your characters in a totally different direction than you planned. And that’s okay.

I hope you enjoy The Story Canvas, a place where we can learn how to paint words with meaning. And stay tuned for my author website, which is coming soon!

I ask that you give me some grace this week as I put the finishing touches on the website. You may not see many posts over the next few days, but I hope that by the end of the week, I can say that this website is finished (for now)!

Thank you all so much for going on this journey with me. Here’s to many years on The Story Canvas!

Happy writing!
—E.J.

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If you enjoyed this post, I hope you’ll consider buying one of my books, donating to the blog, reading my stories on Vocal, and/or taking a look at my RedBubble shop so I can continue to produce 100% free content!

Photo by Kelli Tungay on Unsplash