I’m deep in the middle of
a character-naming crisis, people.
This is not as serious as
other writing crises that I could be having (“The plot is nonexistent, the
villain is laughable, and the main character is an airhead, but at least the
spelling is immaculate”) but it is not fun in the moment. Kind of like, oh, I
don’t know…having a cold. You know that you could be having a much more serious
disease, like bronchitis or the plague. It doesn’t matter. You still feel like
death warmed over.
The main problem with
this crisis is that the character I am trying desperately to name ALREADY HAS A
NAME. Yes! That’s right! This problem is purely self-imposed! Woohoo! Mental
anguish!
And the thing that really
gets me is that I do this on a regular basis. Sometimes I get bored of the name
in question, and sometimes the character itself has changed so much that the
name is no longer suitable (“Well, she used to be a lovely blonde-haired girl
named Mary Sally Sunshine, but then she turned Goth halfway through the
brainstorming process”).
Right now I’m weighing
pros and cons (“Al reminds me of Al Gore!” “But the other one is my cousin’s
name!”), and so far it is coming out on the side of the already-established
name. This is both boring and relieving, as it means I don’t have to go through
drafts and change the name every time it comes up. But it also means I have
gone through the mental anguish for nothing.
Drat.
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