N is for Names

I totally got the idea for this post from Cheri. Everyone needs to have names for the characters. If you have been able to write a story without the character's names I will... Oh. Wait. Okay, so I DID write a short story and the characters did not have names, but that doesn't count. The point is most of the time people in stories have got to have names.

There can be very many reasons behind the names of my peeps, and each individual story tends to have a theme behind the reason for me choosing the names. Did that make sense? Good.

In Blackburn's Prisoner and Thanet's Curse I chose names based on their meaning, and their origin. This was the first time I have ever done this (writing high fantasy I tend to make up names instead.) It was fantastic! I came across some of my favorite names, like:

Cynferth: Welsh, meaning Beautiful Chief. Wait? Really?? Snap. I thought it meant something else. Oh well. It's still a really cool name.

Cenweard: English, meaning Wise Guardian. I LOVE this name. Sadly, I could never name my child this because he would be made fun of so bad.

Nadra: Swahili, meaning Special. This fits her perfectly. I was trying to find a name that started with 'N' that had its origins in Africanishness. And it needed to be short and I wanted it to mean something like 'unusual' so I was very excited.

Then in Haunbrinth everyone is named after real-life people. Not much to tell there. And yes, I did get permission from everyone. Especially the one girl Steph, because she turned out to be a mad angry person with issues.

Cinnamon and Calamus: or Why You Shouldn't Trust Spakes I have peeps divided in two. First there are spakes, who are named after people in the Bible.

Obadiah: Hebrew, God's worker

Solomon: Hebrew, Peace

Micaiah : Hebrew, who is like God?

Sweet! I didn't know what they meant before, I just picked them 'cause they're Bible names. That's pretty cool. Everyone else has weird names that come from I don't know where. Some are middle names of the people they're based on, and some people are named things like Scotch, or Emdy, or Jacqueline, just because that's who they are.

Oy. I need to stop having so many stories that are just floating around.

Oh! My sis told me about these! They are magical.

So what about you? Is there any specific reason you pick out names for your characters, or do they just come to you? Oh, and what was the weirdest name you ever used for one of your characters?

Let Me See...

Today was a bad week in writing. It was chock-full of good things, nonsense, and white noise. (White noise is for the parts of this past week that I know happened, but I can't remember anything but a white fuzz. You'd think I took drugs or something, but I hate even sudaphed, and I never take advil or tylenol. They're of the DEVILLLLLLL! Ok. Not really. But if in the end they do end up being of the devil, I totally called it.)

The closest I could find to devil tylenol. Sadness.

All this to say my word count is low. I forget exact, but I'm pretty sure I haven't hit 20,000 yet, and it's pretty much half a month over... Wait.

I promised myself I would not be all whiny-whiny, I'm a baby! I hate my life! Kill me now!

Stormtroopers hate their life too. We will commiserate together!!

So here is the good news: 22,038 is my word count! yay!

Here is the bad news: 30,362 is where I am supposed to be. FAIL.

Good news again: I can write today!

Bad news again: 8342 is how many words I would need to write to make it up. That's at least 17 pages.

So what am I doing here instead of writing like a banshee?

This is a banshee.

What I am doing is waiting to tell you a story! Just a quick one...

I was scrolling through what I had written last night when I saw one of the *gasp!* red squiggly lines letting me know I had spelled something wrong. Death! dying! Destruction! Yeah, no. Writing fantasy or anything fantasy-related means that there are squiggly lines all the time. it doesn't matter if Nadra, Cynferth, Cenweard, and Braeden are all real names (Afrikaan, Welsh, English, English) the dictionary does not recognize them. And in order to make my book more friendly all curses are in a language that doesn't exist, so there are squiggly lines under Yila! Kriev! Yuksiy! etc. (Although Yila doesn't count, I just like saying it).

So when there was a squiggly line I wasn't too worried, but I read it anyway just to make sure. And it was a good thing I did. It turns out my one character, Damaria, was sitting on a pile of plankets.

Yup. Instead of soft woolen blankets, she was resting on a whole bunch a' slabs of wood. How comfortable.

Wait! Wait! Wait! Plankets are REAL! Check this out:

I just had a #8 E-o-M experience

The description is hilarious, so check it out here. Oh my puppy dogs and windshield wipers. Incredible.