why do writers love great names?

I'm sure I'm not the only writer on Earth who is prone to falling in love with a beautiful, or even just plain quirky, name. I know that when I name one of the people in my stories, I try to make it reflect some aspect of his or her character or life and I notice most writers do the same thing.

But even more than great made up names, I love great true life names. Hannah Blyth is a Welsh teenager who discovered an asteroid while on work experience at a telescope laboratory - so they've named the asteroid after her. How fantastic! Along with Halley's and Hale Bopp, we will now have Hannah Blyth out there floating about.

It makes me think of some of my other favourite names.

I fell in love with Harvey Milk some years ago when I read The Mayor of Castro street by Randy Shilts. My friend told me it was the just the latest in a long line of unavailable men I'd fallen for but Harvey was hit for six right out of the park unavailable, even for me; he was rampantly gay and had been dead for about 40 years. Apart from everything else appealing about him, I thought his name was so beautifully nutty - but then I read that his mother had been christened Minerva and she was known as Minnie Milk. His uncle was Morrie Milk.

I remember a year or so ago a woman came into The Incidental Bookshop and bought some books on credit. When I checked the receipt for her signature, I couldn't believe what I saw. I probably actually gawked at that completely average looking old credit card slip because, well, on it was written one of the most amazing names I'd ever seen.

Joy Bliss.

I must say I was sceptical as I looked at that name, thinking it must have been a scam, a fake card or at the least, the result of a deed poll change. But when I looked up and into the face the owner of that phantasmagorical label, I was reassured that the human who stood before me was indeed both joy and bliss personified. She was a fit old lady, I guess you would say spry, with a magnificently cheeky smile and eyes that emitted feel-good rays like an old time movie robot's emitted bad ones.

'You're kidding;' I said to her. 'That's really your name?'

'Oh, yes,' she said cheerfully. 'I married it, of course. My husband's name was Bob - but everyone called him Happy. So we were always Happy and Joy Bliss.'

Mrs Bliss (Miss-is Bliss - oh, glorious natural rhyme!) assured me they were well named and that their life together had been divine; I have no reason not to believe her. Though I didn't specifically ask, it was obvious from the things she said that Happy Bliss was no longer with us but it didn't seem to have daunted her optimism.

I smiled every time I thought of her for the rest of the day and just before I went to sleep that night, I noted how apt the name was; she had certainly brought a little bit of joy into the day of this retail imprisoned writer.

I once met another gorgeous old woman named Shirley Turley. She had also married into her moniker and I laughed when she said, 'That's how you know you're in love; when marriage is going to stick you with a poem for a name and you still say I do.'

I was once trying to name a character who was a fiery, optimistic, young Irish woman. I was thinking something like Truman Capote's Holly Golightly would be perfect but it takes a lot of storymaking skill to make a name like that seem real. I picked up my local paper one morning that week and on the front page, was the picture of a young mother named Bridie Lightbound who had started a support group for the wives of servicemen stationed in war zones. I christened my story girl Bridie Lightfoot; it was the perfect name for her.

I'd love to know about any great names you've seen - leave me a comment about it. I promise not to steal them if you tell me that you're a writer and may use it yourself sometime.

does it ever get easier to call yourself a writer?

I got my first payment for something I'd written almost thirty years ago. It didn't involve a lot of dollars but I remember thinking at the time, 'Oh-KAY! Now I'm a REAL writer.' If I'd thought about it, I guess I would have assumed that I would never again have that horrible experience of not knowing what to say when someone asked me what I did. Like so:

People at parties:   Pleased to meet you! And what do you DO?

Me:                        I'm a ... well ... I work in a deli actually. 

People at Parties:  Oh, how utterly fascination, darling!

Me:                        (desperately) But I'm also ... well... I'm PRIMARILY ...  a writer. 

People at Parties:  A writer! Well! Now I'm really utterly fascination! Before I was pretending. 

Me:                        That's fine. 

People at Parties:  (intimately, leaning in) Have you written anything I'd recognise? 

Me:                        Um. (long pause) No. Probably not. 

People at parties:  (leaning out again) So, do you have good kabanas at your deli? 

Me:                         (double desperate) My short film did play on SBS three times. Very late at night. 

People at Parties:  What about your fish? Which market do they come from?

Since then, I have at times, made a living from writing. Yes, they were short periods of time and it certainly was not a grand living - nevertheless, there were no sneaky bar-maid gigs, no black-ops in retail. I have two books published by well-known publishing houses and one self-published. I edit and I ghost-write. I do web copy. Nevertheless, I still find it just as hard as Simon Keck does to reply unselfconsciously to that awful question, 'So, what do you do?' 

From Simon's blog:

The volunteer at the box office flashed me the usual puzzled expression I receive when I tell people my surname.

“Keck? That can’t be right.”

“So it’s not on the list?”

“No, I mean it doesn’t sound right. Is it a real word?”

“No, it’s a real name."

“Oh… Is it like your nom de plume?”

"Just the nom really”

Honestly, this is just gorgeous. Simon Keck is definitely a Real Writer.

The Incidental Bookseller

I am a bookseller.

But I'm not primarily a bookseller. My highest calling is that of Creative Genius but unfortunately the world hasn't yet realised this and so I'm forced to supplement my meager living by selling books. It's not so bad. Quite sexy in fact, at times, when the new stock comes in and there are all those luscious taped up boxes full of unsullied books wanting nothing more than to give up their retail virginity to me. To me! Ooh, it feels so GOOD! Suck it and see for yourselves, all you green eyed book monsters out there. A writer who is also a bookseller. Maybe there is a god after all.

Still, satiating as it can often be, being a bookseller is not an afternoon at the beauty spa. Selling books is hard work. It is at least as hard as writing them - this I know because I have done both - and it is most certainly much harder than reading them. Well, most of them anyhow. I'm sure we all have a difficult book in our past, the reading of which was the frustrational equivalent of having your eyes sandpapered out of their sockets by an angry soccer hooligan. But that is food for another blog...

Now, to the specific aspects of the general difficulty of selling books.

1) Physically, the most difficult thing is that BOOKS ARE HEAVY.  Carrying one lonely book from the kitchen to the front veranda to sit in the morning sun and sip a fresh made coffee is no great imposition, it's true. But now I want you to close your eyes and imagine carrying ten or fifteen of the suckers from the back of the shop to the front and then carrying the ten or fifteen that were at the front down to the back for no apparent reason except to participate in the mysterious ritual  of 'rotating the stock'.  When I first heard of 'rotating the stock', I tried cheating by just picking up a few books at a time and  turning a quick circle. But it didn't seem to help sales at all so I stopped doing that - I felt a bit silly.

2) Emotionally, the most difficult thing of all for a Creative Genius like myself is DEALING WITH THE PUBLIC. The Public, in case you didn't know, is a seething mass of crazy idiosyncrasy*. They want the impossible yesterday. When you offer to order it for them by tomorrow, they huff and they puff and they finally grudgingly agree to wait the extra day for whatever impossible thing it is that they can't live without. So you run around like a cat with a dead rat strapped to its tail and procure the preferred impossibility for them. You dutifully, smugly even, have the impossible sitting there waiting for them to pick up and while they're about it, give your ego a quick but hearty touch up. You know, say something like, "Holy shit! How the HELL did you ever manage to get this impossible thing for me so swiftly? Who are you really? SuperBookGirl? You're astonishing! You're fantastic! God, let me slip you an extra tenner just for being so damn clever" and other suchlike things.

Now keep in mind, this is only what I think should happen, what I am expecting to happen, what God has decreed should happen to all diligent book sellers who go beyond the call of duty for a customer who desires the impossible.

What actually happens is a good bit different. What actually happens is that they don't even bother to pick it up at all.

After a week, you put it back on the shelf sadly. Another week later and you feel glad when someone else buys the impossibility - it hurts too much to see it there, a reminder of your magic-making gone unappreciated. Another week later again and the original customer comes back and wants to know where their impossible to find book is. When you tell them that you sent it home with someone who actually wanted it enough to give you money for it, they call you names and walk out, vowing never to return. It's cruel and unusual and I don't know how I go on sometimes.

3) Finally, spiritually, the most difficult aspect of selling books, the roughest, the most soul destroying, is that you somehow have to stop yourself from standing around all day reading the stock. 


Or not.

* Why don't we just cut out the middle man and spell idiosyncrasy with a z? Idiosyncrazy. That says it all.