My Favorite Part

So I said I was going to hold myself accountable and post updates and word counts about the book I finally started writing.

Hrmm...well, in the past week, I have started a Word document and it has 454 words. 36 of them are actual story. I have all sorts of excuses for this - hours of driving, moving in, going to school, being lazy - but the biggest of them? Names.

That's right. 62 of my words have to do with names that I looked up this afternoon until I made myself stop. In honor of those, I though I would ramble about why I love names so much (AKA why my children will thank me for giving my characters names that I otherwise would have cursed them with).

Despite how many characters I've named and how long a list of names I have saved, I don't have any set way of picking them. Sometimes a name sparks the idea for the story, sometimes I just happen to see or think of one that works.

Sometimes I know what letter I want to use for the name and dig around until I find a perfect match. For this, I am obsessed with the Baby Name Voyager.

Sometimes I'm looking more for a meaning. Those are usually a lot easier to find.

I always like finding names with a meaning but that no one uses anymore. When I found this lovely site, I was thrilled. Name webs - oh my goodness beautiful!

A lot of times I end up with a theme for groups of characters. For this book, I've ended up with a mix of Armenian and Aztec/Mayan names. I'm not entirely sure how that happened, but I like how it turned out - the uniqueness of Armenian names (for Americans, at least) and the wealth of mythological names from the Aztec and Mayan cultures. I do a little cutting, nicknaming and letter rearranging to make my names fit together without being too bizarre.

Well, they're still bizarre, but I can't stand having boring names for my amazing characters. Picking the name helps me figure out the character's personality, which is why I was doing that before starting to write. Mother and Baby don't have the same...zest as Arawa or Emere. Although I may have gone a little too crazy with the names this time, which just lets me spend more time fiddling with them!

And yes, I am aware that I am very strangely in love with names.