05 November 2006

NaNo, Day 5 – The Neverending Argument

Most of today's writing was taken up by some bickering between the female protagonist and the god that is the father of her child. It didn't start out to be an argument, but it sure ended up that way. The protagonist's father even appeared to try and convince her not to be pissing off the gods, but the protag is a bit stubborn. She'll move heaven and hell to retrieve her missing daughter, gods be damned.

Of course when the protag's father made an appearance, I had to scramble for a name for him. I have this thing about names, I can't just shove Bob in as a placeholder and move on, I have to have a right name or I can't move forward. It bogged me down for a while while I delved into Google and did some quick research. I allowed myself 10 minutes. I found a name with a good sound- nothing competing with the main characters – and a good meaning. I put it in place, ignoring the unease that comes from not being anal retentive about my name research. Yes, Bob the Internal Editor is alive and well and standing in my kitchen, drinking my coffee.

Soundtracks I'm working to: All three LOTR soundtracks compiled into one big playlist, The Keeper soundtrack (Nice Persian overtones), Gladiator soundtrack, Last of the Mohicans soundtrack, Navan (Gaelic a capella group), The Orange Tree (French Canadian tunes), Dean Martin's Greatest Hits, ('cause I'm .5 Italian), Blackhawk Down soundtrack, Bruce Cockburn 'Speechless' (kick butt guitar instrumentals). As you may notice, not much there with vocals. I've listened to Dean Martin so much I can tune him out, and Navan is in Gaelic, where I only know a few words, so I'm safe. I try and pick the soundtrack to go with the scene. LOTR seems to go well with a lot of scenes, but sometimes I find myself visualizing the scene from LOTR that the music was from. That tells me I need to stop watching those movies so much, and find some other soundtracks.

What music do you work to, if any?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm the same with names. I need them in order to get a grip on the character. And since they have to be historically corrects, it's a particular fun research. :)

My music? Opera - mostly Italian belcanto.

Constance Brewer said...

I can't listen to opera and write- I get too caught up in the music. Also, my Italian is not good enough anymore to understand things completely, but just good enough to pick up random words and sentences.

Nice to know others are name-anal, too. :)

Carla said...

I need to find the right name for anyone important too, it seems to be part of the character. 'Jimmy' gives me a completely different mental image from 'James'.

Music - none, it distracts me too much.

Constance Brewer said...

Do you guys pick villian names based on people you don't like? *g* I want to say it's subliminal, but...

Diana said...

Oh, I have to have the *RIGHT* name, too. Once set, I almost never change it.

Only once did I pick villain names based on people I didn't like. It worked perfectly, but it's not something I'd probably do again.

Music? Most of the time I don't use any music at all. I didn't understand until last year that music came on CDs! (I thought a CD was a Certificate of Deposit. LOL) So I've picked up a few, but they're so darned expensive. For background while I write, I love Henry VIII's "All Goodly Sports" and have some Renaissance & Gothic music now, and a few Classical (I like Yo-Yo Ma's baroque) and one or two Jazz, but my favorites are becoming the weird stuff: Japanese drums from Hokkaido, Aconcagua and Bolivian music from the Andes, Scottish drums & bagpipes, Russian balalaikas, etc. For writing in a fantasy world the Medievalish and exotic things are neat.