Blog Archive: February 2008

Having been outed as a public librarian, I've suddenly been doing all kinds of things for my SCBWI chapter. Which, honestly, is just terrific. It makes me feeling knowledgeable and connected in a way I don't usually have the opportunity to feel.

First came the presentation for my local network, which resulted in this post about this reasons to know your librarian and this list of public library resources for authors. In June, I'll be doing an extended in-the-library presentation for a different, local, not-exclusively-children's writer's organization.

And as of today, you can read my article Digital Library Resources for Authors in the spring issue of The Prairie Wind. It opens with a discussion of subscription databases in general (what they are, how to use them, etc.), and then describes several of my favorite common ones. I had so much to say that I'm saving discussion of print resources for a future issue.

Fun!

Last week, I posted about character names that, by themselves, evoke personality. And I promised I’d follow up with a post about unusual character names.

Unless you want your characters to fade into the woodwork, you don’t name them Bob and Nancy Smith. A distinctive name evokes personality, culture and heritage, parents’ personality, time period. And it has a greater chance of getting wedged in your brain.

Some of my favorite distinctive, but fairly realistic, character names: Ramona Quimby, Minerva Clark, Hugo Cabret, Clementine, Arthur Dent, Kiki Strike.

Some of my least favorite distinctive character names: Holling Hoodhood, Comfort Snowberger, Lionel Esrog. Why don’t I like them? Maybe because they’re just a bit too unfamiliar. I’ve never known a person named Comfort (besides Alex Comfort). I’ve never known a person named Hoodhood. In fact, on a Yahoo! people search, only nine Hoodhoods come up in the entire USA. Nine. (And, interestingly, they’re all from Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Udall, Kansas—not Long Island, where Gary D. Schmidt’s The Wednesday Wars is set!) There are even fewer Essrogs.

This is not necessarily a criticism. The names were effective; among thousands upon thousands of other character names, they stuck in my head, right? But it does beg the question, how distinctive is too distinctive? When does unusual become just plain weird?

Twenty or so years ago, many odd character names in realistic fiction were blamed on hippie parents (e.g., Bunny, Starship, and Shadbush in Betty Miles’ B, My Name Is Bunny). I’m not sure what the rationale is these days. The Secret Life of Sparrow Delaney and The Spell Book of Listen Taylor both involve the supernatural, so I suppose eccentric parents are to blame for those unusual monikers. There are an awful lot of eccentric parents out there in Fiction Land.

Books that take place in another world are, of course, excused. The Jetsons aside, you just don’t expect to meet George and Judy in a wildly fantastical or futuristic setting. Creative names are expected, if not mandatory. The main danger is names that are so unusual they’re impossible to pronounce. The difficult names, I confess, were one of my major turn-offs when I attempted to read Eragon. And let’s not talk about Tolkien.

I’m still working my way through Philip Reeve’s Hungry City Chronicles. Along with writing rollicking (and bloody) yarns, Reeve is a master of character naming to rival Charles Dickens. And he’s so brazen about it. He never shies for the ridiculous; he strives for it. And, more importantly, he pulls it off.

Reeves gives his primary characters distinctive, but believable names: Tom Natsworthy, Hester Shaw. Anna Fang and Nimrod Pennyroyal raise your eyebrows, but still slip through. Then he really lets loose. Oenone Zero. Nabisco Shkin. Minty Bapsnack. I mean, Minty Bapsnack! I ask you.

And if his human characters weren’t enough, there’s dozens of ships that need names. They range from the striking but ordinary Jenny Haniver to the head-scratching 13th Floor Elevator. But just wait until you get to a battle scene with the Bad Hair Day, Visible Panty Line, or—my favorite—Damn You, Gravity!

Ultimately, though, a memorable story is far more crucial to making its home in a reader’s memory than a memorable name alone. Take Dorothy Gale, Anne Shirley, Harry Potter. The names are as ordinary as bread and butter, but we remember them as if they belonged to our dearest friends. And, because of their stories, they are.

ETA: Interestingly, Carmela Martino's second column on character names, posted today, addresses Schmidt's naming of Holling Hoodhood. As I said, I'm not criticizing the choice of name; I know a lot of people think it's great! And it didn't stop me from very much enjoying the story. But it gave me pause. And that's something you have to consider when you're naming characters: will it give your readers pause in a good way, or a bad way? Like everything else in your book, there may be no way of knowing.

I've fallen behind in the Kidlitosphere lately, both reading and posting-wise. I chalk it up to the season, in large part; I've been trying really hard to be nice to myself and not stress out about things like, say, keeping up with the blog. Here are some things I've been enjoying that have nothing to do with the Internet:

• Vegan cooking - I'm enjoying Isa Chandra Moskowitz's cookbook Vegan with a Vengeance: Over 150 Delicious, Cheap, Animal-Free Recipes That Rock. So far, so good! We've been using her seitan recipe for some time now, and over the past few weeks we've also tried the scrambled tofu, biscuits with sausage gravy (one of my favorite foods ever, from my meat-eating days), and onion miso soup. I'm planning to make the chocolate raspberry cake for my dad's birthday. If you've ever thought about reducing your dairy/egg/meat intake, take a look. Vegan with a Vengeance is a far cry from scary nut-and-twig vegan recipes from days of yore.
• Watching Doctor Who - When I put the "complete first series" of Doctor Who on hold at the library, I was expecting an assortment of kitschy episodes from 40 years ago. Somehow I completely missed that the BBC revived the series in 2005, and HOO BABY is it good! It's well-written, with terrific acting and quite respectable special effects. If you were a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation or The X-Files, you'll probably enjoy it. And maybe even fall a little bit in love with Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor. Like maybe I did. Hypothetically speaking.
• Listening to New (To Me) Music - Iron & Wine and Calexico's joint effort In the Reins is seep-into-the-consciousness-and-take-up-residence music. It's so very mellow and pretty, it pretty much perfectly mirrors these snowy February mornings. I'll be using it as mood music for one of my writing projects I plan to return to once I finish this revision of another (slog, slog, slog). Some other new-to-me albums getting a lot of play: the New Pornographers' Challengers, the Finches' Human Like a House, and the Magnetic Fields' I.

And I'll be back soon with that post about unusual character names. Pinky swear.

In the most recent issue of The Prairie Wind, the Illinois SCBWI’s newsletter, Carmela Martino had an interesting article about putting thought into naming characters. What can you glean from a character based on name alone, she asks? How is a Hubert different from a Kyle?

But one thing I’d like to know that Martino didn’t address is how do names alone suggest characterization?

Is it something about the way they sound when you say them? Is a Leilani beautiful and graceful, the way the name dances from your lips? In which case, does that make a Gretchen abrasive?

Or is it because of other words the name evokes? You might expect a Kurt to be, well, curt. Or a Bruce to be bear-like, because of the word Bruin. Rose to be beautiful but hiding a few thorns.

And there’s nicknames. A boy who insists on being called James instead of Jim is reserved and particular. Every nickname for a girl named Alexandra – Alex, Lexi, Sandy, Xandra, you name it – says something different about her.

A William has hundreds of regal predecessors. An Adolf immediately calls to mind Hitler.

Certain patterns in literature, however, I can’t understand. For example, I’ve wondered why so many Percys turn out to be wankers or downright evil: Percy Weasley from Harry Potter, Peerless Percy from The Man Without a Face, Percy Wetmore from The Green Mile, and I know I’ve encountered others. Is it because “Percy” sounds like “prissy” or “persnickety”? Is it because it evokes pursing your lips when you taste something sour? In which case, why not pursing your lips for a kiss?

(With some thought I can think of some positive Percys. Percy Jackson from The Lightning Thief immediately comes to mind, of course. With a little more digging, I’ve also come up with Percy Engine – Thomas’s best friend – and Sir Percy of Scandia, a/k/a Black Knight, from Marvel comics. Maybe the tide is turning?)

More thoughts on character names – specifically, unusual ones – in literature are on the way…

According to the American Academy of Family Physicians, As many as half a million people in the United States may have winter depression. Another 10% to 20% may experience mild SAD." SAD, as in Seasonal Affective Disorder: depression that ebbs and flows with the seasons.

Given that the population of the U.S. hovers around 300 million, that means 30 to 60 million people are walking around right now with the winter blues - symptoms of depression that aren't life-changing enough to be treated clinically. Their lives continue more or less normally. They go to work and school. They're eating and sleeping okay. They have no interest in giving up on life. But there's a malaise clouding everything until the sunshine and green of spring return.

And yes, okay, maybe I am one of those people.

Thinking about this, I began to wonder what teen fiction out there talks about SAD. The only example I can think of is Brian Mandabach's ...Or Not?, in which the main character is given to depressive episodes year-round but is, readers are told, especially hard-hit in winter. In fact, I'm having trouble thinking of much teen fiction that deals with teen depression, period.

I can think of plenty of books that deal with a teen's grief following the death of a loved one; a depressed or otherwise mentally ill parent; or a teen who commits suicide and/or takes a gun to school and shoots everyone, following prolonged bullying or social ostracization. But what about books in which teen characters face depression on an ongoing basis, but don't commit suicide, don't shoot up their classmates? Is it just me, or is there really not much out there?

According to Teen Depression, about 20% of teens experience a depressive episode, which generally lasts about 8 months. Of those, 20-40% will experience multiple depressive episodes. About 5% of teens are suffering from major (clinical) depression at any one time. There's more statistics, but you get the picture: teen depression is remarkably common.

Meanwhile, only 8 in every 100,000 teens comitted suicide in the year 2000. I hate to say "only", because it's still a sad and frightening number. Suicide is the third leading cause of death among teens - how's that for scary? But it's still clear that the overwhelming majority of teens coping with depression do just that: find ways to cope.

Here are some other books I've come up with about teens with depression or bipolar disorder (which features depressive episodes), that focus on COPING rather than suicide:

• Julie Halpern's novel Get Well Soon focuses on a teen with major depression, inspired by her own experiences. Little Willow has an interesting interview with Halpern about it here.
• Sonya Sones's novel Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy is about a teen's experience with her sister's emerging bipolar disorder (again, inspired by the author's personal experiences).
• Dia Calhoun's novel The Phoenix Dance is a retelling of "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," with a protagonist who copes with bipolar disorder. Calhoun has Bipolar Two Illness herself.

If anyone can think of others, I would love to know about them!