Really.
I can ALMOST work without a title for the book but this no name thing for the plant kid is making me crazy. I had one name and I liked it a lot. But then I started trying to figure out how he got the name and it didn't work with the story and now I've lost my connection to that name. Then I thought I had one that would work but it still doesn't feel right.
I'm looking for a one syllable boy's name, sorta soft sounding, not hard. Not too common. (Piece of cake, right?) Anyway, if you are one of those people who excels at names, I'm taking all suggestions.
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If you are one of those people who can use a generic name until the right one comes along, more power to you. I can't.
I really don't enjoy trying to come up with the right name for each character. It's downright painful sometimes, like trying on a pair of shoes in the store and you think they feel pretty good but who's to tell when you wear them to work and it's too late to send them back and suddenly you have a blister on your heel and you fold squares of toilet paper into a wedge and stuff it into the shoes so you can make in til the end of the day and then the next day the thought of even looking at those shoes makes you want to cry. (This can't just happen to me, right?)
Tonight's mission is to find one name, just one and I'll be happy. Like a name for a rough-around-the-edges adult female character who becomes a mentor of sorts to the MC. Or names for the 3 or 4 kids that are obstacles to the MC through-out the book. Or a name for the dog even. Sheesh. It shouldn't be that hard. But it is.
Flipping through the baby books isn't doing it for me this time and I don't think I even own a phonebook anymore (which is how I came up with my own name). So what do you do to find the right name for a character? And when you pick a name, does it feel instantly right or do you have to break it in, just like that pair of new shoes?
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Things to Do
Quotes
"We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason why they write so little." Anne Lamott
"Love the writing, love the writing, love the writing...the rest will follow."Jane Yolen
"The whole thing is, you’ve got to make them care about somebody." Frank Capra
"As writers, we must be willing to feel our sadness, our anger, our terror, so we can reach in and find our sweet vulnerability that is just sitting there waiting for us to come back home." Nancy Slonim Aronie
"Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours!" Richard Bach
"Yet somehow, we write; and most of the time, we like what we write. The dark place seems less dark when we get there. It was only the journey that was fearful." Susan Shaughnessy
"You must want to enough. Enough to take all the rejections, enough to pay the price of disappointment and discouragement while you are learning. Like any other artist you must learn your craft -- then you can add all the genius you like." Phyllis A. Whitney
"Writers write about what obsesses them. You draw those cards. I lost my mother when I was 14. My daughter died at the age of 6. I lost my faith as a Catholic. When I'm writing, the darkness is always there. I go where the pain is." Anne Rice
"I write in terror. I have to talk myself into bravery with every sentence, sometimes every syllable." Cynthia Ozick
"There have been societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories." Ursula K. LeGuin
"Your first job is to get your own story straight." Natalie Goldberg
"Only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking." Naomi Wolf
"Few children learn to read books by themselves. Someone has to lure them into the wonderful world of the written word; someone has to show them the way." Orville Prescott
"A writer either speaks to adults and bores kids, or speaks to kids and upsets adults." Ursula K. LeGuin
"I'd always thought you had to be a special person to write. And then I realized you just have to start." Abigail Thomas
"You will recognize your own path when you come upon it, because you will suddenly have all the energy and imagination you will ever need." Jerry Gillies
"But they’re not telling the truth if they don’t teach, one, that writing is hard work, and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer." Doris Lessing
"A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote."Yevgeny Yentushenko
"And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the
greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't
believe in magic will never find it." Roald Dahl
"I compose sometimes with a pen and notebook, sometimes on the computer; it makes no difference. If all I had was a chisel and a rock I would write on the rock." Ursula Le Guin
"If you want to write from a place of emotional integrity, it is important to learn everything you can about all kinds of emotions, including those that exist in you, that you wish didn't." Elizabeth Berg
"And this is the way a novel gets written, in ignorance, fear, sorrow, madness, and a kind of psychotic happiness as an incubator for the wonders being born." Jack Kerouac
"Successful writers are not the ones who write the best sentences. They are the ones who keep writing. They are the ones who discover what is most important and strangest and most pleasurable in themselves, and keep believing in the value of their work, despite the difficulties." Bonnie Friedman
Who am I?I was born on the Cancer/Leo cusp and share a birthday with Ernest Hemingway and Robin Williams. The similarities don't stop there as I can go from depressed to ecstatic without ever passing go. I feel scared most of the time though my friends call me brave and I find it easier to believe in my friends than to believe in my own abilities to make what I want out of my life.
Who am I? A wife, a mother, a daughter, and even, gulp, a grandmother.
Who am I? A writer who never gets tired of playing with words, even when the words are hard to find. A writer of books for children and articles for grown-ups and many things in-between.
Who am I? A motivational speaker, writing instructor, workshop leader and full-time follower of dreams.
Who am I? Read and find out.
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