There are a few things I would do differently if I sold for the first time today. One of those seems kind of basic. I’d make a character name chart. With eight novellas and five single titles written and turned in, I’m having the did I already use that name somewhere issue in my no-short-term-memory brain. Between main characters and secondary characters, the possibility for doubling up and causing confusion is great. This is especially true since, as a friend just pointed out to me, I have a habit of using one syllable hero names. There are only so many of those out there. Well, that’s probably not true, but you get the point.

Now is the perfect time to do this. My next book is due on November 15th. That gives me plenty of time to do some writing and writing-related projects I’ve been putting off. The character name chart is at the very top of the must-do list. And how simple, really. It’s a matter of setting up a spreadsheet with three sections - first name, last name and title of book. A quick use of the “Find On This Page” function and - voila - problem solved.

Why don’t I think of these things when they’d be less work for me…?

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 17th, 2008 at 9:55 am and is filed under About Me, About Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.