Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Naming Names

When I start this post, it's 12:44am. So yes, NaNo has officially begun, but I haven't started on the ol' novel yet. I'll be doing that after work. If I start now, I may never go to bed.

I was going to do some outlining on Monday, but, well, the internet came calling and who was I to ignore it? I did finally name the girl. I said to myself, she's an ordinary down to earth girl, and she should have a name that reflects that. So somehow she became Claire. And then she needed a last name, and for some reason those can be tricky. I mean, you can name a child anything you want, but a last name tends to reflect a bit of heritage. You pick a name, and a whole bunch of history comes with it.

But then I started thinking about comic book characters and this recurring theme of two first names. That is, when both their first and last name are generally accepted first names. I'm talking about Bruce Wayne, Ronnie Raymond, Jim Gordon, Barry Allen…

Here my thought process stopped, and I realized that "Allen" made for a good, ordinary, down to earth last name. I might change it later, or I might be too lazy and forget. And while we're on the subject of two first names, technically Des Mackenzie counts as well. That's the interesting thing about last names. You can just throw a first name, or a word, or a string of letters that sounds like a word on there and call it good. I used to be really weird about looking up whether something was a real name or not. But there's really no point in that. I mean, who's going to call you out on it?

Anyway, my first real report on NaNo progress will probably be on Friday. Hopefully I'll have something interesting to share by then.


8/22/17 Update: The name of this post has been changed, as I realized that I'd already named a post that. The URL remains the same.

1 comment:

  1. NaNo Though I know you love sounds like secret microchip having club or maybe I am just a hater who can't put 50,000 words together, Probably the hater thing and I hate when work gets in the way of creativity maybe you should get a job at a computer lab that does not stifle your talent Who knows you may even be good at a job like that. Anyways your surrounding spark imagination like the internet songs crazy people that come to your work it makes for good writing material. Use it have fun and when will this next Nano masterpiece be available for public reading????? HMMMM?????

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