Step 1: Identify Cultural Background

This step is particularly critical when I’m writing fantasy, as I tend to base the cultures in the world on cultures from our world.  For instance, I’m currently writing a series of short stories that take place in two nations based respectively on Finnish/Arctic cultures and Spain.  This step is equally important even when writing contemporary, though.  Is your character French?  American?  Chinese?  Zambian?  Once you know that, check out baby name websites for gigantic lists of relevant names.  My favorite is behindthename.com, which helpfully groups names by country of origin.

Step 2: Meaning

As I discussed in my last name-related post, meanings can be very powerful but they can also be very helpful in figuring out what name to choose.  Search a meaning you might want associated with a character like water, power, noble, cunning, moon, etc.  Search multiple possible meanings because you never know what will strike you until you see it.

Step 3: Identify Feeling

This is perhaps my favorite step.  Most of my characters don’t come to me with names attached, but they almost always elicit some feeling in me.  It’s the first inkling of a personality and I like to match that with the sound of the name.  I may want a name to be soft, hard, fluid, melodic, violent, long, round, tall, etc.  My critique partner and I recently worked on finding a name for one of her secondary characters; she wanted it to be a short, graceful name that sounded longer and taller than it was to echo the fact that the character was a ballerina.

Step 4: Specifics

Once I’ve identified the feeling and possible meaning I want associated with the name, I decide what specifics will most likely achieve that association.  For instance, if I want a fluid name, I might look at names with the letters L, I, M, N, A.  I might want it to have four or more syllables with varying stresses.  I might avoid sounds that happen in the back of the throat.  So maybe I end up with a name like Lillianna.  The name I land on may or may not have the meaning I was looking for in Step 2.  Sometimes the meaning trumps all other concerns, but sometimes the feeling and sound of the name are both more important to me.  Sometimes I get really lucky and have both.

Again, this process may or may not work for you, but either way, embrace the fun that naming can be!

(from the transcript of the interview with Mr. Blue Bicpen Ballpoint, February 24, 2013)

 Erin:  So, tell me a little about yourself.

Blue Bicpen Ballpoint:  My name is Blue Bicpen Ballpoint, but call me Blue.  I mean, can you imagine someone saying, “Blue Bicpen Ballpoint, come get your ink refills” (that’d be my mother, of course) or “Blue Bicpen Ballpoint, come roll down the sidewalk with us” (my friends, obviously)?  Far too unwieldy.  And while we’re speaking of names, Bicpen is an old family name.  From my mother’s second cousin, you understand.  A very distinguished family, as are the Ballpoints.

Erin:  Really.

Blue:  Oh, yes.  We’re the workhorses, the solid, dependable ones you can count on for anything.  We’re not particularly beautiful, I’ll grant you that, but in the end we get the job done and that’s what really matters, isn’t it?

Erin:  Absolutely.

Blue:  Not like those newfangled computers, you know.  Always breaking down for some reason or another.  Everyone’s always complaining, “Oh, you stupid ****ing computer, why did you have to pick today to die on me?”  But do you ever hear someone say, “Oh, you stupid ****ing pen, why did you have to pick today to die on me?”  No!  I’ll tell you why, it’s because we aren’t so awfully flighty like they are, always flitting off to check some page, some annoying notification, and then deciding out of caprice that it’s the battery’s turn to take a siesta.  Do we do that?  Of course not.  We’ll stick around to get the job done.  Afterwards, though . . . I can’t vouch for afterwards.

Erin:  Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk about.

Blue:  The afterwards?  I told you, there are some topics I’m really not supposed to discuss.

Erin:  No, no, not the afterwards – I meant computers.  Specifically, your relationship with them.

Blue:  Well, that’s a relief.  Off the record, though, if you want to see the afterwards, there’s an excellent bar downtown called The Inkwell – but I digress.  Computers.  So, a far too large percent of the population seems to prefer them over pens.  They say it’s faster and you can do more things with it.  But, I mean, does it really matter?  When you want a pen, it’s not to play some fancy game (although, I must admit, there is an assortment of wonderful games you can play with a pen – anyone heard of tic-tac-toe?).  It’s to write, and if you want the artistic view of things, have you ever heard anyone gush, “the words flowed from my keyboard like ink”?  Or, if you want to be technical, “like little pixels on a screen”?  I’m guessing not.  And, back to the artist, can you draw with a computer?  Again, I’m guessing no.  I mean, Da Vinci used pens instead of computers, and he was a genius so that’s got to count for something.

Erin:  Well, in truth, computers hadn’t been invented yet, so da Vinci couldn’t have used them even if he wanted to.  But I see your point. 

Blue:  Thank you.

Erin:  You are very welcome.  Now, let’s focus on writing.  In your heart, do you believe that pens are superior to computers?

Blue:  Miss, I’m afraid that’s not a fair question.

Erin:  Oh, but Mr. Blue, surely you can put aside your bias for this one question.

Blue:  Well, no, miss, but I’m afraid I don’t have a heart so how can I answer?

Erin:  Fine.  Deep down in your ink cartridge, do you believe that pens are superior to computers?

Blue:  Better.  As for your answer, and I’m sure the whole Ballpoint clan will hate me for this (to say nothing of the Bicpens – they’re very competitive), it doesn’t really matter, does it?  In the end, it’s not the pen, or the computer, who’s writing the words, it’s the human controlling us.  Although, I must say, script written the traditional way does have a nice personal flair to it . . .

Erin:  Thank you, Mr. Blue.  I believe we’re at the end of our talk here, so is there anything you’d like to ask me before I go?

Blue:  No, I don’t think so – wait.  Are you transcribing this?

Erin:  Well, yes, when we set up this interview you gave me permission to record what you’re saying.

Blue:  Yes, yes, I know.  My question is, exactly what are you transcribing this with?

Erin:   . . . A computer.

Blue:  Traitor!

Erin:  Wait, Mr. Blue, I’m sure we can work this out –

Blue:  I’m afraid not.  Goodbye.

Erin:  Wait . . .

(end of transcript)

In one of my classes last week, we read an article that got me thinking about inspiration.  The article, “Structural Holes and Good Ideas” by Ronald S. Burt, discusses how managers can position themselves to find good ideas.  He says, “…people who stand near the holes in a social structure are at higher risk of having good ideas.”   (I love the phrasing there: at higher risk of having good ideas.  Like it’s something to be wary of, something with consequences.  Though it’s true – having good ideas is risky because the next step is doing something with them, which is a truly terrifying prospect.)

The basic argument is that the more different people and groups you interact with, the more diverse your experiences will be, and the more likely you’ll be to have a good idea.  Makes sense, right?  While my class was talking in terms of management, the same concept can easily be applied to writing. 

So then how does one go about extending their inspiration network?  Here are some suggestions (though this is by no means an exhaustive list):

Read outside your genre.  As writers, we tend to read the same kinds of books and stories we like to write.  We absolutely should be reading widely within our favorite genres, but don’t be afraid to branch out too.  I read and write primarily young adult, but I’ve found incredible inspiration in memoir, poetry, and even classics.  Experiment with genres!

Consume other types of media.  Reading is a writer’s bread and butter, but limiting yourself to only books means cutting yourself off from so many potential sources of inspiration.  Go to an art museum.  Watch one of this year’s Best Picture nominees.  Listen to new music (Pandora is great for finding new tunes).  Spend a few hours browsing Pinterest or DeviantArt.  There are so many means of creation in the world – take advantage of that.

Pay attention in class.  You should really be doing this anyway, but don’t pay attention just to pass the test.  Your classes are filled with facts and concepts and debates that will likely trigger your own ideas.  Obviously, English and history classes are good for this.  But so are your science classes.  Even math can inspire.

Meet new people.  Developing relationships with people outside your typical group is what networking is all about.  These interactions will certainly provide new experiences and will likely expand your worldview.  I truly believe that getting to know people who are different from you is one of the best ways to become a better writer.

The main takeaway here is that inspiration can be found.  Don’t wait for it to come to you – go out into the world and find it yourself!

I know for me, self-doubt has been an attribute I’ve been more aware of these past couple of years: high school and all that jazz. On one level, I think it’s a wonderful thing for me to reflect on my self-doubt. Questioning myself on why I feel a certain way about something or why I put myself down so often opens up some deep thoughts-and with all this thinking comes honesty. You have to be honest. We all know how to flatter ourselves to the point of extremes but at the end of the day, you know you can’t grow without being honest with yourself.

And this is the cool part. I think every writer needs some honesty dusted in their writing, be it in their writing or how they write-yep, even fiction writers. When it comes to advancing the plot or depicting a character’s feelings, you have to often think about what’s best for the story, even if it’s not necessarily what you want. Poets and nonfiction writers come into contact with a more personal side of honesty, as if either of those genres already weren’t personal enough. For both, you have to consider your own feelings, how you truly feel about what it is being written about and then, find a way to convey that to the readers.

Earlier, I mentioned the one level of self-doubt, interpreting it positively, humorously. Here’s the second level to that- it hurts. When we think some people are better writers, when we think everything we’ve ever written is utter crap- it can’t help but make a jab at you, somewhere. ‘Why can’t I do that?’ ‘Am I not good enough?’ Trust me, I’ve been there and it’s not a cool feeling to have lingering around you. So, everybody hold up your hands. And pat yourself on the back. You may not realize it, but it takes a lot to be able to write page after page of fantastical stories and make them sound beautiful. And every writer is good at their craft in a different way, with varying strengths and weaknesses. And that’s all cool. It’s something we ought to celebrate and be proud of- so be confident in what you write, what you do. And whenever you do get to feeling down, you’ve got a whole community right around you.

I never said I was a writer. Other people did, and I just kind of went with it. When I’d get a writing assignment at school, I’d just do like Hemmingway said: sit down at the typewriter and bleed. Apparently I’m decent at it. I’ll let you be the judge of that. I suppose I’m good enough. I know to dot my i’s and cross my t’s, and not to split my infinitives.  I can conjugate a verb; I am conjugating a verb; I just conjugated a verb; I will conjugate again; I’m quite the verb conjugator. I can smartly, succinctly string a sentence of similar sounds. Also, I think I punctuated this okay, and I could have started this sentence with ‘and’ but I didn’t. That’s good enough, right? People seem to think so.

Yet… is it really? I look at my fairly decent fiction, my passing poems, my apparently impressive essays, and I wonder: it’s clever enough, but is it new? People sometimes tell me how something I’ve written reminds them of this poet or that author, and they mean it as a compliment, but I don’t want to sound like someone else. I want to have an original voice, and I’m beginning to wonder if there are any left. The hip ‘postmodernist’ kids at school would seem to say there aren’t. Could that be true?

The thing is, I don’t even know with whom I’m competing.  My high school education’s done me well with Thoreau and Shakespeare, Poe and Hawthorne, O’Connor and Dickinson. But what about Christie? Rand? Singer? Robbins? Angelou? Clarke? Grisham? King?  Rice? Morrison? Tolkien? Asimov? Proust? I could go on, but I think you get the point. I’m outnumbered by the thousands. There is more writing than any one person could ever read. To add something brand new to the millennia-old zeitgeist of man, with its staggering, overwhelming, unfathomable reaches… well, only a fool would try.

I never said I was that fool. Other people did, and I just kind of went with it. But to tell you the truth, I actually want to be that fool, always trying, always writing, always hoping against hope that he can do something original even when it seems that everything’s been done. I suppose all writers are idiots that way, but brave ones, the kind who just won’t give up. We’d all be lucky to be such fools as that.

I think I’m on my fifth journal by now.  And before you start to applaud me – wow, she’s filled up four whole notebooks! – wait, and read the rest of the story.  I didn’t fill up the books.  Rather, I got about 30 pages into each one, decided I didn’t like how my entries were going, or how I skipped about a month between this current one and the one before it, or something, and then I would just start over.  So yes, I admit it.  I’ve had a lot of problems with keeping a journal, from continuity issues (is it good to skip weeks between entries?) to wondering exactly what the point of this whole enterprise is.  But lately, I’ve been getting better at keeping a journal, or at least a little bit.  Part of that was just accepting where my problems lay.

A big one was continuity.  I’d go months and months without an entry, either through forgetfulness, laziness, or just feeling like I had nothing to say.  Sometimes, I’d feel like I was wasting time by writing, like I should be working on homework or studying or doing who-knows-what.  And maybe this isn’t something I’ve managed to apply to my journaling yet, but if I were some magical writing spirit disembodied voice person (MWSDVP) , I’d tell myself, “So what?  Writing is important too.  Like that saying, animals are people too.  Except for scientifically, they’re technically not, so I guess this was a bad analogy, but you know what?  Emotionally and humanely, they are.  So, writing is important emotionally and humanely.  Like animals . . . but I digress.”  And, back as me again, I’d laugh, wondering if my MWSDVP has some kind of weird disorder where he just can’t stay on topic, but eventually, I’d probably listen to the MWSDVP, just because he does make sense, albeit in a rather rambling fashion.  And about the forgetfulness, and the laziness?  The MWSDVP says, “Forget about it.  Just write, whenever you feel like it.  And please don’t start a new journal when you’re ashamed of the huge humongous gap between entries.  It wastes paper.”  (Did I mention my MWSDVP was an environmentalist?)

Another problem was realizing why I was writing this journal.  All disclaimers aside, I am a rather average suburban teenager.  I’m never going to get my journal published like Anne Frank or Zlata Filipovic.  In all likelihood, no one’s ever going to want to read it.  So then what’s the point?  I’ve read writing books that say you should keep a journal “to discover your voice.”  I guess that makes sense:  write a lot, so writing will be easier and you’ll be able to write with a style that is more genuinely yours.  But for my writing voice to really matter, someone will need to read my work.  For someone to want to read my work, I’ll have to write a piece worth reading.  And that brings me back to the problem of finding something to say.  Personally, I think that by trying “to discover my voice” in this way I’ll really just become even more self-conscious about the manner in which I’m writing (is that really my style?  Is that something I would say?) and not end up really writing anything at all, so I’ve got a different solution (me, not the MWSDVP this time):  I should write because I love it, and write in my journal because it’s somewhere I can write for me.  Just me.  I shouldn’t worry about what others might think, because others aren’t going to read it, just me, and I honestly don’t care whether or not I skip months between entries or how my writing voice sounds in it.  I’m probably the only person that will ever read my journal, and I’m okay with that, because it’s just for me.  (And the MWSDVP.)

If you ask many adults why they chose the career they did, the common answers will vary from: it pays well, it was available, it was interesting, or they had no other options. A writer does not have a choice- a writer has that burning, un-ignorable passion planted within them that makes it challenging to focus on any another career with such a seductive other option. But where does that basic need to put pen-to-paper and give life to wonderful tales about lands that do not exist, people that never live, and events that do not happen come from?

For me, writing was a game that I found an inevitable part of my childhood. Before I knew how to write, I would sit in my room with a Barbie in one hand and my constant companion Bunny, my adored stuffed toy, and create entire tales about Barbie and Bunny’s adventures. Sure, just about every little kid has a stuffed animal or plays with dolls, but at some point they shut them away and “grow up”. I, however, never grew up. I only became more equipped to further Barbie and Bunny’s tales as I learned to write. I remember sitting in my room folding paper into little books that were then filled with colorful and horribly misspelled stories.

These simplistic, yet widely detailed stories remained my secret until sixth grade. My school was hosting a four day field trip for all the sixth graders; the trick, however, was that I had never been away from my parents for longer than the average sleepover. Nerves devoured me as I stepped onto the bus for the trip; I was sure that I would not be able to fall asleep and would surely end up a walking zombie from lack of sleep. As the call for lights out came on the first night, I lay in a wooden bunk bed staring through the darkness at the slats in the bunk above me. I tried to jam my eyes shut and just fall asleep, but that completely did not work. So, I turned to my failsafe sleep technique: I made up a story. Being that it was late and had been an exhausting day, my story was not too far from the actual events of the day and the characters were only slight variations of the people in the bunks around me.

On the second night, I found serenity in these same characters, building on their story from the night before with renewed creativity. By the last night, there was a full-blow fight developed between the main character and her best friend. When I finally returned home, I rushed to write down my sleep story. When I typed the last word and added that final, exuberance-filled period to the story, I knew I was going to be a writer forever. Writing is what I was going to do when I grew up and all the years in-between.

Each writer that I have talked to has a different story on their first taste of the addicting passion, but each always shares the experience of being drawn towards the craft. Being a writer, as I said, is not a choice. It is a seed that is planted deep within the writer and with time and just one drop of opportunity- or necessity- flourishes into a garden of creativity.

A Messy Friendship

Be yourself always said, but now I’m not so sure.

Because I have broken to many friendships that can never be cured

I joke around and have some fun, and push thing a little too far.

Until I realize what I’ve done. I’m just a blob of emotional scars.

I try to fix the scars I’ve made, I try not to pick the scabs,

But when I do there is a mess of blood, and I rub when I should dab.

When I rub, the feelings lock in, and the friendship ends I guess.

So I try not to be myself, because I end up making a mess.

We are SO excited to announce that we are currently accepting submissions for the second issue!  This issue’s theme is growth - just in time for spring, too!

The submission guidelines can be found HERE.  We cannot wait to see what you all come up with!  The deadline for submissions is March 1 so make sure you send them by then.  Get writing, everyone!

We are SO excited to announce that we are currently accepting submissions for the second issue!  This issue’s theme is growth - just in time for spring, too!

The submission guidelines can be found HERE.  We cannot wait to see what you all come up with!  The deadline for submissions is March 1 so make sure you send them by then.  Get writing, everyone!