Last week I blogged about character names and what kicked off the entire thing was the fact that my heroine in the idea for book 1 had a name that a TV character had messed up for me. Every time I thought of her, this other character would come in and take over. Clearly, this was a huge issue for getting to know this heroine well enough to write her.
I thought we had it all settled. Cool new name with a nickname that was also super cool and added color to her father who is also part of the three book arc. I fought my way through the issues this raised for other characters and it was all good.
My peace lasted three days. Heroine number 1 is back to her original name: Claire.
This is the stuff that makes me insane and why I say my characters insist on torturing me. This is mild compared to some of the things they've pulled on me, but still I wasted a lot of time on the name thing and I'll be wasting a lot more going forward. Why? Because I'm going to have to do a lot of extra work to get to know my heroine and obliterate TV Claire from my head.
I did think about fighting her on this, but that idea didn't last long. I've never won a fight with my characters about their names.
So Claire it is no matter how difficult it makes things for m.
