The Name Game

Soooo, I was procrastinating on Facebook - true story - and my chat partner and I were batting around titles for my February release... AND, we hit a home run. No joke! It turned into a good day for writing!

It was a combination of some other titles we had tried out, a word here, a phrase there, a concept, a trick, all blended together into one Lightning title.

When we titled Game Plan it was done with a lot of back and forth brainstorming... the title "Game Plan"didn't come crashing into the conversation as the OMG THIS. IS. IT. title.  It slipped in there quietly and was passed back and forth in the list of "Well I like these:". I might admit that as much as I came to love the title - it's absolutely the most appropriate for the story and I was able to work it into the story a bit more solidly to make it excellent... I was kinda disappointed I didn't have that Lightning moment with it.

So I have had it with this one! The working title is Henry, after the first character written into the story. I've called it Henry for over a year now and I'm quite attached to it, and to him, but it's not a good title for the book... kinda like calling your child "Mooser Goose" (which I'm guilty of doing) is not very appropriate for trivia on the back of his NHL trading card.

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Voices in my head

Aptitude is off to the editors at Fierce which makes me incredibly nervous... I'm actually *more* nervous on a second round edit than the first. The first time around, the editor can chalk it up to, "well, she's just a bit of a moron" as they mark up my errors and make obvious suggestions for improvement that I never though of... but the second time around I have no excuse - they've already  made the suggestions, all I have to do is make the changes. So what if I don't make the changes enough, or make enough changes, or make them in the right way? So I tend to picture my editor glaring and muttering about how s/he already gave me the tools to fix that and thinking I'm some diva maverick writer who ignores reason and experience to do it my own way.

Anyway, those aren't the voices.

My task this week is to work on differentiating the voices in Henry - four different characters need four distinct voices. This goal has been the primary focus since the first draft and yes, I've heard editors' thoughts saying 'They still sound the same!' The problem is, they all came from MY head. They all sound the same because in many ways they all sound like ME. Every character I've written has been an extension, an example of me. Ella was me as a high schooler, Kat was me as an adoptive mom. I don't get the voices whispering to me like other people seem to... And this time it's been a very academic, technical approach to separating them out. Amputations. Poor editors.

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Late running start

With my back to back releases coming up, I'm basically spending a month with each while the other is off being edited. This morning I get to start in with my indie-pub Henry (which is definitely not the title but I haven't found the right title yet!)

Henry is the story of one day in high school told by four characters. Henry was the first character I wrote, hence the working title. This story was sort of the first where I experienced that thing where the character demands something different from what the writer intended. I didn't believe that at first - I mean, it's my brain, my thoughts, my story so how could something from my brain overtake control? Weird. But this story started with three characters - the forth was at the school and interacted with each of the characters but I did not intend or even want to tell his side. Then I conceded and wrote it just so my details would be clear with the other three narraters but in the end it was apparent that the fourth voice had to be included. Score one for the imaginary character.

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