When I visited one of the boards I check, someone posted a link to a blog by an aspiring author. The entry was on topic and well thought out. And it made me feel inadequate as a blogger because everything I post is so stream of consciousness, off the top of my head, kinds of things. I write till I run out of time or run out of steam, run spell check and post.
I checked out another post on this blog while I was there--about naming characters. It left me stunned. All I could think was, "are there writers who really get to pick the names?" =8-O I've never been able to pick the names of my h/h. They come in and TELL me their names. If they don't speak them right out loud, they let me know as I'm paging through one of my baby name books. That's me, they say. Sometimes they've made me look through half a dozen books before I find their name.
Like Ryne. That's a boy's name, so of course I didn't find it for my heroine until I'd gone through a ton of name books. A ton before I discovered it listed under girl's names in one book. Then she said, that's it. Believe me, if I was allowed to choose, I would not have spent that many hours paging through names. Her hero is Daire. I'd never even heard that name before.
I think I've mentioned Cai from Power of Two told me her name as I walked to my cube at work. I knew she was part Asian and then I find out Cai is a Vietnamese name. Or Mika from Through a Crimson Veil. She appeared while I'm working on another proposal, tells me her name, and when I ask her why she's here, just smiles at me. She was very unhelpful, but then she did turn out to be half demon. Mika's hero spells his name wrong. Conor with one "N." Although I had a friend email me today and tell me this particular spelling is popular in Ireland.
Um, to get back on subject, I was absolutely astounded by the idea of picking names for my characters. Wow. Is that a trip or what? I don't know why I was so amazed, unless it's maybe because I've never talked about this with another writer before and it never dawned on me that anyone got to name their characters for themselves. Tunnel vision, I guess.
Reminds me of the time that a writer friend said something about normal people not having stories/people in their heads. I was like WHOA, you're kidding, right? What do they think about? I've always had people talking to me in my head--it's how I got through all the boring things my parents dragged me to as a kid. Hell, it's how I get through boring things now! ;-)
This bothered me for days. I kept wondering what do people think about? I finally had to ask a friend of mine at work who isn't a writer. My first question was, do you really not have people and their stories in your head? And I was still stunned when she told me she didn't. My next question was the ever tactful, well, then what do you think about? After listening to what she said, I'm glad I'm a writer. Stories are much more interesting than day to day stuff.
Edited to fix punctuation and substitute synonyms for a couple of overused words. It's not easy to be obsessive/compulsive. I keep telling people that. ;-)
Website of the day: Latin phrases and quotes. How many times have you wished you'd known the Latin phrase for something? Okay, so it doesn't come up every day, but it does happen occasionally. I promptly bookmarked this site because I know the day is going to come when I need to know something in Latin.
MN Weather Report: 43 degrees. Wind Chill: 35 degrees.
