Out of ideas

It would be nice if some authors really did have a good old think when naming their characters.

Here, by my foot, as I type, is a terribly thrilling thriller named Land of the Living, by Nicci French. I think it came free with a magazine – I do hope so, as I have absolutely no memory of buying it and I like to think I have some control of the Book Mountain [Your husband says not - Ed]. I have not read beyond the first chapter, despite being quite keen on thrilly books, for one sole sad and saggy little reason. My suspension of disbelief got snapped way early. On the very first page, in fact. Because of the lead character’s name.

The book starts in the first person. A woman is recovering consciousness, and trying to remember where she is and who she is. She slowly recalls that her first name is Abbie. Then:

The other name was harder…. I remembered a class register. Auster, Bishop, Brown, Byrne, Cassini, Cole, Daley, Devereaux, Eve, Finch, Fry. No, stop. Go back. Finch. No. Devereaux. Yes, that was it. A rhyme came to me. A rhyme from long, long ago. Not Deverox like box. Nor Deveroo like shoe. But Devereaux like show. Abbie Devereaux.

And at that point I chucked the book back on the floor and went back to The Diary of a Provincial Lady.

Now, the class register is cute. I don’t mind that. And Abbie Devereaux is a perfectly good name for a heroine. No. What bugged the absolute britches off me was the little rhyme to tell us, the clottish readers, how to pronounce Devereaux. For all I know, a person recovering consciousness might indeed recall some patronising little piece of toshery they used to piss their class-mates right off with. But I have a hard-to-pronounce surname, and I have on several occasions, slow and bewildered, recovered consciousness and wondered what the buggery hell my name was. I have not once pondered to myself on its pronounciation, despite the fact only about 17% of my acquaintance ever get it right and my school-fellows used to have a very unkind nickname for me to reflect my obsession with getting them to say it correctly. Because, if you are sounding off class registers in your head, or whatever else, to try and see which name dings you over the crumpet with possessive intent, you do not need to work out how to pronounce it. It has just SOUNDED in your head. It is, ergo, pronounced.

And I really, really hate being patronised as to how to pronounce names of non-Anglo-Saxon origin. We, the reader, are not all illiterate xenophobes, readers tend not to be for some inexplicable reason, and if we were, we’d hardly be gunning for a lassie called Devereaux, would we? And patronised on this issue by an author called Nicci, no less. I grew up in Italy, as far as I’m concerned she’s pronounced ‘Nietzsche’ and if she doesn’t like it she can damn well wang a K in there.

So, names. As TS Eliot so exceedingly famously remarked, ‘The naming of cats is a difficult matter.’ Personally, I find naming characters rather more fun than actually writing the novel, but it is clear to me that quite a few novelists find it beyond tedious and would give them all serial numbers if their agents would only let them. Hence that hoary old advice in many, many ‘How to write novels’ books to look probable names up in the telephone directory. I say, please don’t. I feel so sad when faced with page after page of William Browns chasing John Smiths and getting off with Susan Joneses. I mean yes, obviously, most people ARE called Susan Jones. But, even in real life, not everyone is. In my immense smugness, I have compiled some points and/or pieces of advice which are possibly more useful [Smug little... oh. You've said already].

1. Do not fall into the opposite trap of the telephone directory (the anti-directory), and have all your characters called Finarfin Bolderdash and Arabella Ramsbottom-Smythe. Unless you are taking the piss, of course. In which case, knock yourself out.
2. No pronounciation guides. Certainly not on the first page. Certainly not wafting about in the narrator’s consciousness on her own damn name. If you must inform us, have someone take the mick. For a good example of how to do this, see Reginald Hill’s Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel (pronounced, of course, Dee-yell, as the Z is actually a yogh).
3. Doing a Dickens and making the name fit the character (Cheeryble Brothers, Gradgrind, Wackford Squeers, M’Choakumchild) is very jolly, but really looked a little demented by the time Anthony Trollope (Dr Pessimist Anticant, anyone?) was doing it. Mind you, he wasn’t quite so damn funny as Dickens. It can still be amusing to do this subtly, for one or two characters. I have a character called Ian Happy, for example. And a Superintendent called Martin Able. The big irritant in my hero’s working life is called Mark Price. None of them names that’ll make you bat an eyelid, but. Heh heh heh.
4. Try to have a reason for and history behind each name. Even the William Browns of this world were named that for a reason – it wasn’t chosen by computer, à la The Dispossessed. [But SF&F names are another post for another day, OK? Or we'll be here until midnight]. My hero, Jiro Watanabe Smith, is so named because his idiot teenage mother thought it would be romantic to name him after his (swiftly sent back home) teenage Japanese father. Jiro is her (and his father’s) first son, Jiro is a traditional Japanese name for a second son. His issues with his unusual heritage, and difficulties being accepted by both the British and the Japanese communities, are pretty much signalled right there in the spectacularly inappropriate name. Not that I will explain this in the novel, oh no. But Jiro knows, and I know he knows.
5. Buy a good dictionary of first names. By ‘good’, I mean for God’s sake eschew all pastel coloured ones with darling infants on the front cover. Also, avoid any that are less than half an inch thick. Make sure there are long, comprehensive entries for each name, listing culture of origin, history, etymology, variants, and possibly even famous bearers. Most ‘baby name’ books have the etymologies wrong, are nauseatingly sentimental, and have no proper context for any given name. Hence recent outburst of dark-haired people called Rory, or, God have mercy, Ruaridh, I suppose. Seriously, if you name a character, say, Glyndwr Jones, and have him trotting about Wales in the 18th century, you’ll feel a right tit when someone points out Glyndwr only came into use as a first name in the early 20th century. As they invariably will. The Penguin Dictionary of First Names is pretty good. It’s the one I am slowly battering to papery oblivion.
6. If you know nothing, or, worse, very little, about the culture you are depicting, don’t go there. A novel set in small-town America, in which every woman is called Darlene and every man Chuck or Hank, will make you look like a twit. Ditto and more so a story I saw once (luckily in manuscript), set in Calcutta, in which the men were called Sanjay and Asok and the women Zainab and Fatima. In the same family. Because all Indian Hindus name their sons from Sanskrit and their daughters from the Koran.
7. Try to keep the names age-appropriate. Some authors really have a tin ear for naming fashions. I really have read books set today in which everyone, whether eight or eighty, has been called Pat and Jean and Alfred and Horace. And one or two in which everyone has been Jack and Chloe and Luke and Kayleigh. The Penguin Dictionary has lists at the back for which names were most popular for the past ten decades. That kind of thing is really quite useful.
8. And, finally, nothing hacks me personally off more than getting about a third of the way into a modern novel and realising all the men are still referred to as ‘Smith’ and ‘Petersen’ and ‘Farquhar’ and all the women as ‘Susie’ and ‘Lilian’ and ‘Maisie’, regardless of how well we know the character and the character’s status in relation to the point-of-view character. What the hell is this, Jane Austen? Even Dickens, that arch, oh, so arch, Victorian didn’t do anything quite so galumphingly crass.

I was stranded in a café without a book earlier this week. I was considering expiring from boredom when I remembered the large black notebook and biro in my bag. So I duly fished them out and wrote (what? Oh, stuff, you know. I think it included a shopping list, possible names for assorted minor characters in any given novel set in my imaginary world and the beginnings [wretched - Ed] of a triolet about coffee. Not bad for half-an-hour’s work).

Having gone through ['Gone through' implies that you have in any way emerged from it. Which you haven't - Ed] the ’sucker’ phase of buying and borrowing as many books on writing as I could lay my nail-bitten little paws on, I am aware that many people swear by writing in cafés. Heck, one even swears by park benches [Something along the lines of: 'Damn and blast this horrible bench, there's nowhere to rest my notebook and some bastard has been sick under it,' I assume].

Julia Cameron and Natalie Goldberg, for example, who both write books on how to get over the Dreaded Writer’s Block, are quite lyrical about sitting about for hours, making whimsical notes about espresso machines and other customer’s clothes. It surprises me not in the slightest that I am unable to relax and do this. My dear little demented squirrel of a mind [Quite] is far too busy: ‘Ooh, look at me writing. Look at me from the outside. See? A woman sitting by herself, with a notebook. Writing. How exciting! What is she writing? Is she writing about me? Is she famous? Will she be famous?’ and at this point you start mentally dressing for the event. A Writer ought to wear black, and have kohl-lined eyes. Perhaps even a beautiful shawl. And she should write in an elegant leather-bound notebook, or a Moleskine, or is that passé? At any rate, she should be using a fountain pen. This is a biro. It has been chewed. And this is a spiral-bound recycled notebook. Very eco-friendly, no doubt, but combined with the jeans, green tee-shirt, lack of make-up, baby-face and general dishevelment, I actually look like a student doing her homework.

And anyway, this is entirely the wrong sort of café. I am sitting in the middle of a well-lit, airy room, on a leatherette banquette (I keep sliding gently forward. If I don’t concentrate I’ll be off it and under the glass-topped table). I am drinking earl grey tea. Barring the need to keep one knee firmly wedged against the table-leg, I am perfectly comfortable. I should of course be in a darkened corner (bugger the eye-strain), on a wooden stool, perching the moleskine carefully in between the sticky rings on the bar. I should be drinking absinthe. Or at the very least, recklessly strong black coffee with four sugars (to make up for the fact I haven’t eaten for 36 hours. Rather than having had quite a nice sandwich a few minutes ago.) The other clients at the right sort of café will also be clad in black polo-necks, deeply hung-over, having complicated love-affairs with each other and chain-smoking away like an industrial city sky-line. The conversation at the nearest table will be fascinating – jealousy, Freud, ménages à trois, anxst, and Engels. As it is, I am surrounded by Yummy Mummies in pastel pashminas with the occasional infant in tow (pastels and toddlers? Do you suppose they actually live at the dry-cleaners?).

[On the other hand, this is the perfect café to write in, because it is a) comfortable, b) quiet and c) you are the most exciting thing in it. Now go finish that damn' triolet]

Actually, if you don’t mind, I’ll finish this one next week.

I have been less sprightly and in-the-pink of late than I would have wished. So I am now Officially Eating Healthily and, terrifyingly, Cutting Down on Coffee. Today’s caffeine intake amounts to one (1) cup of tea. Oh, and decaff filter stuff. But decaff not only does not count as coffee, it anti-counts, I swear. Each cup is draining a little more life-blood from me. Therefore, my notes for this entry so far resemble a ‘this is your brain on drugs’ poster. Shall I just wing it, and see where we end up? [and how would this differ from your usual method of working? - Ed]

Not all of us can sit at a desk in the spare room crafting prose all day. Or even some days. Or even one day a week. Pets, offspring, spouses, all demand unreasonable great chunks of our time. And the spare room probably has kids/ guests/ boxes/ no coffee facilities in it. And then the weekend is over. Now, I can’t help you if you’re a neurosurgeon or a delivery-van driver, but if you work in an office, you really do have the time to write a novel. Yes you do. OK, so you can’t join NaNoWriMo and do it in a month, but really, neither did Charles Dickens and he damn well tried. And he was allowed to throw people out of the spare room all day long. So let us turn to the resources your average office is laden with:

1) The desk bunny’s kingdom. Look at all the lovely writery things you have at your desk. Isn’t it great? I myself have five biros, two pencils, a propelling pencil, a magic marker, three sorts of post-it note, a spiral-bound jotter and a big A4 pad of lined paper. I have seen people cosying down with fountain pens, fancy rubbers [Ahem - erasers to our Transatlantic friends. Or this could be seriously mis-read. - Ed] hard-back notebooks, ledgers and even sketch-pads. And, get this, you are supposed to write with these. And doodle. And draw pie-charts. If your school was in the least modern and up-to-date you will have mastered the art of having truly horrible hand-writing, so who is going to know you are actually planning how to murder a senator with a quoit at an orphanage fund-raiser? Who will decipher the scribbled account of sweaty adultery in a church pew while the vicar is dusting in the vestry? Well, hopefully you will, because turning absent-mindedly to a colleague and saying, ‘I can’t read this, is it anything to do with the meeting we had last week?’ will at the very least make next week’s meeting ever so hilarious for everyone else. So do it. Write. All those hours you wasted doodling or attempting work-e-mail composition in advance will be your alibi. If your hand-writing has degenerated beyond any sort of comprehensibility, or if you simply happen to be the typing kind, you can write yourself documents on your oh-so-kindly-provided-by-the-Management computer. This has the drawback of also being more legible to nosy colleagues who were never taught that standing silently behind a chap’s chair while he types is not. Good. Manners. But it does look even more like work than using a pen (why?) and anyway if you litter the screen with windows and clatter about between them a lot you stand a higher chance of a) looking busy and b) foiling the Nosy One. Or e-mail. E-mail is good. You can e-mail yourself with ’stuff to work on this weekend’. This has the added bonus of being perfectly true, and the added added bonus of seriously impressing your boss.

2) Enforced doughnut consumption. Everything I said about notebooks, post-its and jotters holds true for meetings. In fact, if you are actually writing things down in a meeting, you will unnerve everyone else and suddenly the whole thing will be rushed through in jig-time, allowing you to get back to your desk and transcribe your fabulous new haikus before home-time. Nota bene, if you are supposed to be writing in the meeting, because you are minute-taking, do NOT try and do it in haiku form, no matter how aesthetically pleasing the result. Your boss has less of a sense of humour than you might like to think.

3) Cowering the professional way. There will be times, however, when privacy is harder to come by, and your desk will not be the safe haven it ought to be. Perhaps your incarnation of the nosy colleague is actually your line-manager. Perhaps the office is a little too open-plan. You need to hide. The lavatory is traditional, and therefore to be shunned at all costs. Apart from the issues of hygiene, odours, lack of anything to lean on while you write, other people actually needing to use the lavatory and the embarrassment of having concerned colleagues asking if you’re alright, it smacks far too much of endless dreary school lunch-breaks and subterfuges to get out of Games. Be brave. Yes, the lavatory is lockable, but shun it anyway. Even the tea-room is better, though spending more than fifteen minutes at a time in there is awkward to explain away. The best, the very best trick, for hiding from one’s boss is to stride briskly about the building with a stack of paper-work. Make sure it contains a good mix of spreadsheets, hand-written jottings and things with letterheads. Try to catch the eye of any passer-by. Take your pile to colleague’s desks and ask to borrow a calculator. Look panicky. Mention your poor head for figures. They will flee from you. Even those that sometime did seek you.

Next week we will be covering the even more important topic of how to day-dream at work. Now, if you will excuse me, I am going to humiliate myself by being caught licking the packet the last lot of proper coffee came in. Kids! Drugs! Just say no!