WriYe Blogging Circle post 2: Naming Characters

Hot on the heels of my post on character depth comes one on character naming.

(I joined the circle late, so I'm a little behind and had to do two posts right away. My poor blog has not seen so much activity... well, ever. If the server crashes we'll just call it karma and hope it recovers quickly.)

So how do I name my characters?

WriYe blogging circle post 1: character depth

So, apparently the rest of the world is awaiting with breathless interest my response to the question: how do I give my characters depth?

First blog post of 2012!!!

Blogging is apparently not something that comes easily to me. All through last year I used the excuse that I was writing a million words for WriYe and blog posts didn't count, so I'd do one after I'd met my word count goal.

Yeah, that went well.

This year, I told myself, is going to be different. Two posts a week every month. So how did it get to the ninth without a single post?

Therefore, hello and welcome to the first post of 2012. No, make that the first of many posts of 2012.

Things I'm going to blog about in 2012:

• 2011. Last year I wrote 12 first drafts and a million words and told nobody about it. That achievement deserves at least a couple of blog entries
• My 2012 projects. This year I'm aiming for the only thing that could possibly be more awesome than a million words. What's that, you ask? Publication.
• Writing software. I've recently started trialling Liquid Story Binder, the first piece of writing software I've actually met that I didn't hate on sight. Whether this continues or not is still open to debate. I also like full screen text editors and I'm looking for an operating system that lets me have light text on a dark background system-wide. I'll give Windows 7 a chance, but I know Linux can do what I want, so we'll see...
• Writing. It wouldn't be much of a writing blog if I didn't talk about writing, would it? One of the big things here will be my 'seat of the pants' attitude and how it fares as I move into rewriting and editing. I've got some first drafts to do this year as well, though, so maybe we'll see the development of a detailed creative paradigm here.
• Books. Reviews, electronic v. paper, book-binding projects, book repair... I really don't know what, but I love books in all their forms and I really think everyone else should share my passion.
• Other stuff. Music, writing groups, writing months, random things about writing, cute pictures of my cats and goats (who are of course the most awesome cats and goats in the universe), and I guess the occasional link to something I think is awesome and needs to be shared.

So anyway, look! First blog post of 2012!

NaNoFiMo 2011

These are all the pretty certificates I made for NaNoFiMo 2011. Like them? These ones are for everyone:

...and these ones are just for the winners:

Just for the record, I'm one of the winners. 80,097/80,000 words and 'the end' written on two drafts.

Invitation to the Ink-Slingers' Ball

Ink-Slingers all come out tonight
Ink-Slingers now come one come all
The Ink-Slinger's moon is shining bright
Ink-Slingers come to the Ink-Slingers' Ball

By the seat of my pants...

[rant]

NaNo is kind of annoying me at the moment. Every time I go there, everyone seems to be saying "YOU MUST PLAN" and "PANTSERS ARE MORONS". Of course it's impossible to write 50k in a month without spending eleven months of the year planning it, right? What kind of crazy person would try to write 50k in a month without planning the whole thing down to the positioning of the toadstool MMC accidentally crushes at the end of chapter 17?

Yeah, you can imagine how die-hard pantser Siana Blackwood feels about that...

So of course I keep trying to present the other point of view, the idea that you can write 50k (or even a fair bit more) in a month without having a plan. Only then I get irritated and start second-guessing myself...

I mean, I write the first draft in a full-screen text editor. Then I paste it into a word processor for spell-checking, read it a few times and then start making a list of what really should have happened. The list is just on a piece of paper or sometimes in a text file. I don't see the point of all the fancy writing software because I just never use all those features. If I'm happy with this basic list of software (just a text editor and a word processor), does this mean I'm not a 'real writer'? Ye Gods, I've never even written a single word while sitting in a coffee shop...

But then, so far thais year I've written:

1. No Light in the Dark - 95k


2. Dispersion - 120k


3. Blade's Edge - 65k


4. Night Without Stars - 75k


5. Hope - 85k


6. Dark Star - 100k


7. Broken Mirror - 66k


8. Crystals and Moonlight - 60k

... and started How to Nuke Your Enemies (currently 24k)

Eight completed first drafts, none of them written with expensive software, in a cafe or with months of planning in advance. I stand by my pants and by my 'write it anyway' philosophy.

[/rant]

To tell the truth, that's not stuff I expected to be able to say during my 12th month of wrimo-ing. The same people and the same advice were on NaNo last year and I consciously decided to disregard it and believe Chris Baty (No plot? No problem!). I haven't made the expected progression from pantsing a bad story to becoming a planner, though. I guess it's because I really do like the stories I've written. I still can't imagine editing Dispersion or Night Without Stars, because every time I start reading them the characters take over my head and I'm just living through the events along with them. Some tiny part of me knows they're the wrong events, but I really do love them anyway :).

Okay, I feel better now. Maybe I'll go and write something.

By the seat of my pants.

Random Blather

Okay, so I should update my blog more often. I should make that new theme I've been thinking about making. I should do a whole bunch of different things. However, I have done a whole bunch of stuff this year. so I think I should be excused. Still, I will try to mend my ways.

So far this year:

JanNoWriMo: No Light in the Dark (95k)

FebNoWriMo/MarNoWriMo: Dispersion (122k)

April Fools/MayNoWriMo: Night Without Stars (76k)

April Fools/MayNoWriMo: Hope (86k)

WriDaNoJu: Dark Star (100k)

JulNoWriMo: Broken Mirror (41k and counting...)

FebNoWriMo was a loss by 2k and MayNoWriMo was only barely a win, but other than that the year has been going pretty well and I've written 664k of my planned 1 million words. I feel good about that.

Anyway, blog updates will soon be forthcoming, more writing will be done and... and there probably isn't really an 'and'. Oh, Leroy said he's going to start posting as well. I'll let him introduce himself, though...