The Naming of characters is a difficult matter, It isn't just one of your holiday games

I have a character name (ok a couple actually, on a couple of different stories) giving me grief. The name in question has changed.... oh let's see, 20 times now? More? The problem, and this sounds completely crazy I know, is that, because I can't get the name right, the character keeps changing on me. Usually with the name.


Sometimes, I can't even start something until I have the name right. It's like the name literally defines the character and everything that springs from them. Every quality, phobia and dislike. If I can start without it (and I have on several occasions) I have to watch constantly that the character isn't inconsistent because... because they don't have a fucking name?! Seriously? *Sigh* Apparently so.


This particularly character started out based on several things, one of which was that the name had to be one syllable. Or something that could (and would) be shortened down to that. Weird eh? I have gone through literally every one syllable, female name I could find. None of which have fit "just so." I thought I had it for a while there. The character spent the last 2 years with the same name. But it didn't feel entirely right. One small experiment on readers later and we're back to changing it up again.


I have a fallen angel I can't get a proper handle on because he lacks a name (of the only ones that seem to fit, I can't use because they are entirely too pre-loaded with meanings I don't wish to ascribe to him). I have a heroine who becomes someone else entirely sometimes because she lacks the correct name. I have an entire story with NAME1 through to... damn, I think we're on NAME5 or NAME7 now, stalled out. *shakes head*

If I waited for the right names, I'm pretty sure nothing would ever get started.

Sometimes, the name just comes. Blam! There it is! Puff of smoke, thank you, dude's jacked up and good to go. And then there's those other times...

An Inopportune Mouthful

The exercise was to take a piece of dialogue and work it into a story. Somehow, I ended up making it the entire story. Italics indicates the piece of dialogue.


It needs to be further revised, now that I've gotten it back, but here's a wee bit of it:


The fight started because Fat Dan was still eating biscuits and refused to leave the tavern. In all honesty, it wasn't his fault. Fights had a way of happening at the Slug and Manticore and earlier that day he'd had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. For that, he'd been cursed by a crotchety wizard.



The wizard in question, one, Marvo the magnificent, had just been dumped by the sword mistress, love-of-his-life. She'd told him he wasn't tough enough. Never mind that Marvo could nail a pumpkin with a fireball at 40 paces. His sword skills were positively laughable and that was a deal breaker for her.



"Four years Marvo. Four years I've been giving you sword lessons and you haven't learned shit." She'd said, storming off and muttering something about how he never took her seriously.



Like most bipeds, Marvo believed in passing it on. So he did.

Gutting, I Don't Wanna

I do not want to gut 13,000 words. It's all I have. I like them. They're nice words. They never did no harm to no one.

Also, I appear to have a problem with plotting. Not the overall plot, that's usually ok. It's the breaking it down, pacing it out bits where... yeaaaaa, things tend to go not so good.

I've written myself into a corner I'm fairly unsure how to get out of. I do not want to go back and gut half my word count. Getting it was like pulling teeth.

I did some math, writing has been not fun for over a year now. Well over a year now.

Also, also, I think I finally have to come to terms with the fact that I am a shitty blog updater. It's always all or nothing. Either I'm blogging everyday, or weeks and months will go by with not a word. Maybe some day (preferably before I'm published) I'll learn how to find some sort of happy medium between the two extremes, because the current pattern won't work for a fan base. I hear those are pretty nifty-keen. I think it's because when I post regularly (really regularly) I worry things are either too boring, or too full of bitching about writing. I think I remember when it made me happy?

The other reason I'm a bad blogger is because I hate posting something, then revising it 15 times after. Because I'm that person. I loathe writing something and having to hand it in or let people view it immediately after. I like to let things sit so I can go over them again and fix the 50 million errors or shitty wording I usually find the next day.

One day I will learn to plot/pace better. One day writing will be fun again and not this repeated head meet stone thing it currently is. One day I will learn how to blog on a semi-regular basis.

Dragging my heals, I'm doing it right...

on research today for some reason. I don't particularly want to research dueling even though I actually do find it to be a rather interesting subject. I sort of just want to write, but I'm running out of scenes that don't require research. I feel like I'm getting bogged down and don't know where to pick up from and start writing again. Strange I know. I keep going over my outline and most the scenes (even the exciting ones) aren't grabbing me like they usually do. It's been like this for a while. Have I lost the love for my story? wtf.

The hardest parts for me to write, I think, are the transition scenes that you have to have to move from one important moment to the next. (start sarcasm)What? I can't write all action and conflict all the time? (end sarcasm) well poo.

Alright, enough whining.

Double Ugh.

Somehow in the switch from old computer to new I have lost all the work I've done in storylines (Writer's Cafe program) for the last couple of months. So I'm basically back to the beginning on it.

Poo.

Probably going to spend most the day trying to get that all sorted and written out.

I'm having some weird writer's block again regarding this all. I think I'm just feeling overwhelmed with it and not sure where to proceed next. Hopefully it passes quickly. Maybe sorting out the storylines issues will help. If nothing else at least I'll have spent most the day immersed in my story. Maybe that will spark some ideas and help clarify points I know aren't there or are weak.

Damn house is hot today.


Hope your weekend was good.

Ugh

Sometimes, in the process of revising and editing and revising some more, I feel like I'm totally losing the voice of the character and the pacing. I have a long ways to go in balancing description and such with the flow and characters voice. I wish I knew how to fix this.

My Writing Process

So to expand on something mentioned in comments. Here’s my (oh so fascinating I know) current writing process in all its fledgling glory…

I write something, it's a scene, but I frequently don’t yet know, what for, or where in the story (if it even is this story) it belongs. I don't seem to be able to write my story in sequence. I write scenes as they come to me. It’s a barebones scene, in a frantic attempt to get it down before it’s gone. And it's almost more like I'm writing the heart of the scene, anything that I consider, I dunno not extraneous, but not to be the heart of the scene, the meat of it, rarely gets down/out in that first rush of words. Things like description, setting (physical setting, i.e. where they are) get left out. I skimp like hell on descriptions. And given that they feel like one of my weakest areas, I have to make a very concentrated effort to go back later and start adding in sight, sounds, touch etc. So I write scenes, as many as hit me, if multiple ones hit me at once I try to make quick notes that will jog my memory on the others, pick one and run with it. Somewhere down the road I go back to fill them in. I do this several times till I have an actual scene with plot and descriptions and pacing and a point to it, though I’ll likely still have no bloody clue where in the story it goes. Sometimes I don't even know why I'm writing them, but I've learned to trust it because, even if I have to make huge changes later, some part (or the whole thing, it really just depends) belongs somewhere in that story. Ok usually, sometimes it belongs in a different story.

Later when I've got so much written down that it seems like I'll never be able to organize it and it towers above me like a gigantic, virtual, paper monstrosity, I brace myself and start to try and assemble all these seemingly disparate pieces into some sort of cohesive whole. Try to untangle the massive spaghetti style throw down of words I’ve disgorged.

That's when I start to realize that my brain actually knows far more about what it was doing than I give it credit for. Pieces I couldn't begin to place will start dropping into the puzzle and, duhhh, of course it should go there. That links this up with that and lets blah happen down the road. Ooooh! I get it! Then I marvel at how cool my subconscious is and pat myself on the back, something I don't do nearly enough of.

I really wish I could add all the details in right from the beginning, but pre/first draft writing is usually a frantic thing as I attempt to get everything down before it's gone from my head. Even if it does play hell with organization and such. There’s a Flow that comes with it. Time ceases to matter, I can ignore things like food and the need to pee. I’m just thoroughly enthralled with the writing and loving it on a level I’m not even conscious enough to take stock of until after. Thoroughly engaged. God it’s grand.

I have a sneaky suspicion I'll dislike intensely revising for final drafts. On the one hand, a blank page is horrifying and intimidating. On the other hand I’m trying to balance between adding in relevant description and all the extra bits I left out while not losing the flow and momentum of something I’ve previously written.

Ok enough brain spitting, back to character write-ups for my course. Currently these are second and tertiary characters, but who knows! Anything can happen! Cheryl was only supposed to be a mentioned thing and now she’s got a back story to rival Gwen’s! I am not making a story for her. Not a novel anyways. Maybe some sort of short story for the two of them…but not right now. Must finish at least one writing project I start.

Class assignments and lateness

Once again I'm an assignment behind. It's a trend I've noticed more than once now. It's a good thing these aren't graded because I'd be failing all over the place and that worries me. The problem is that my writing process is lengthy as all hell. Or maybe more specifically my revision process. My first drafts... you know, I'm not even really sure they can be considered first drafts, are chaotic, terribly unpolished things. I go over them and go over them, probably an extra 2-3 times before I'd even consider them to be show-able as something unfinished, let alone something finished and polished. And that going over them usually takes a day in between each pass so stuff can percolate in the back of my head. Add to that the fact that I get seem to get words out on the page everyday... It's more than a little frustrating and makes me worry whether this will change. I would eventually like to make writing a full time career. Obviously down the road. But this process I go through, it seems like it would negate that dream. Most published authors seem to take about a year to get a book out and off. Maybe I'm wrong on that one, but when you read the answers of authors to this question, that seems to be the general timeline/consensus. I have no confidence in myself that I could do that.

I even hate writing Blog posts and posting them in the moment. I want/need time to go over them. Let them sit and come back to them fresh so I can reword better, make it more coherent, hopefully more engaging and smarter sounding. But I usually don’t do that for posts and end up going back and hating what I’ve posted. Because the idea of always being a day or more behind on even Blog posts kind of drives me a little nuts.

Will I be able to shorten this whole process down at all? How? Does it just come with experience and confidence? Will I just learn eventually how to put more of what I want to say down on that initial jotting down of ideas? I wrote a lot more, going into more details on my writing process. Not sure that’s really going to be interesting to people and was kind of getting a bit away from the point of this so I’m not going to post it.

But yea, being chronically behind = hate. I'm an incredibly punctual person and this seems to be one area where I'm consistently not and have no idea how to fix that.