Trying to be Positive

Being optimistic about things is hard for me. Unfortunately I tend to be pessimistic and cynical by nature, although not nearly as much as I once was (thankfully!).

Anyway, I am trying my best to apply this to my writing. If I focus too much on the negative, it takes the desire away. And I don’t want that to happen!

Of course there are times when I may be too frustrated or upset about continuing my book. For example, the whole name change thing was highly discouraging, but I wanted desperately to fix it and focused on that. I believe I may have decided on Kaiyo’s new name: it will be Naomi. I think it’s a good representation of my character; not only was it a common enough name used in Victorian times, but I’ve also heard it’s a Japanese name as well. So what better name to choose for my character who is part of two cultures? It may not mean “forgiveness” like I wanted, but that’s ok; I believe the story is going in a slightly different direction.

Another frustrating moment came yesterday when I began thinking about the actual story catalyst. I couldn’t quite figure how to word a short blurb about it, and that made me think that there’s a great deal of re-focusing to do. I then decided to try and edit my chapter that’s up for critique soon (I need to have it posted by next Thursday) and I realized I pretty much have to write the entire chapter again. Not a big deal though; I’ve had to do that for the past three. Oh well; it was written during NaNo last year; I’m certain most are going to need to be re-done.

I’m not giving up though. I’ve invested too much time in this story to be deterred or to trunk it. I just have to keep the creative juices flowing and hope that it will all be cohesive at some point.

Name Change

It looks like I may have to change the name of my MC in my book.

Apparently, it’s not accurate to the language. That’ll teach me to ever trust any name website 😛 I remember when I first went searching for a name, I looked to see if there were other sites that had the same on it. They did, but apparently they must have copied off of one another for they were all wrong.

This is why I should stick to keeping my stories set in an English speaking country 😛

Anyway I am really grateful to the writer who pointed this out to me (they currently live in Tokyo and have for some time). I’d much rather get the name changed now than have it historically and culturally inaccurate.

I did ask my other friend who speaks Japanese what she thinks, but I am still waiting for a response. It’s going to be difficult to see my MC as anything other than Kaiyo, but I am sure I can do it.

I have a few names that could be possible. I am leaning towards just giving her a standard Victorian era name since her mother was American and it would be more likely that she has a Western name. Some of the ones I thought about were: Eliza, Rose and Naomi. The last one would be a good name because that’s also a name that is Japanese as well. I’m not sure which fits her best though, if any at all.

Sigh. It’s a bit frustrating, but I’m sure there will be many more moments like this in the course of writing and editing this book.