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Day 2 - Bogged Down By Names

Procrastination isn't procrastination when it's purposeful - right? I spent my son's afternoon nap not writing, but Googling. Names. Last names, to be more precise. I suddenly discovered that everyone except my heroine lacked a last name. I figured I'd shake those out of my sleeve no problem, since it didn't matter and you could think of hundreds of last names in five minutes, right? Wrong.

You see, at some point I decided that, while not wanting to be too obvious about it, I wouldn't mind giving certain characters names that would give away something about their role - or even the opposite. Thinking that making someone look extremely handsome, gorgeous and breathtaking isn't enough to drive the point home, I thought I would add a surname with a significant meaning, such as 'light' or 'white' or 'true'.

Thing is, Google helps to decide what on earth you might be Googling for, unless it's something within word level. There are no wildcards to search for "last names containing the word white". So after spending literally about two hours on a relatively fruitless search, I had a second thought.

About not being too obvious. I don't want the evil character to be named Damon Black and the heroine to be called Lucy White. That's so painfully obvious it hurts my eyes and fingertips. So, another thought was to either reverse this underlying meaning - giving the bad guy a curiously well-meaning name and the good guy an ominously dark one, but even that proved to be more difficult that I had ever imagined it would be.

So what did I come up with in the end, after wasting a lot of time? That the first name I'd chosen for one of the boys was perfect enough, and for the other a twist in his last name would have to do. A twist you either have to Google or know about. Maybe painfully un-obvious, but I prefer that.

I still managed to get to 4095 words today, writing after I put my son to bed at night. Although I am less satisfied with this second chapter. It's a filler and it knows that, so to speak. Still, you have to get the home situation in somehow, somewhere in the beginning.

Now, for tomorrow... well, tomorrow's Saturday, so we'll just have to see about that. I need to get a chapter plan before I feel secure enough to write. I need to know what to put in which chapter, perhaps even scramble the order of writing and write the important ones first. Figure out an ending, that sort of thing.

In Translation

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