A rose by any other name

I'm not sure about the name Anna. It's been bugging the hell out of me, to be honest with you. I want her name to be palindromic, but Anna feels too close to my name, and while this character and I share a very intense and personal experience, she's not me.

So this is why I love the Internet: I googled 'palindromic names' and within about 2 seconds was reading a list of all the palindromic names out there. Ava? Emme's a pretty name, but I don't really want to ride on the coattails of Jennifer Lopez.

Ava might be good, though. Hmmm.

I've always taken exception to Shakespeare's assertion that a name doesn't mean anything. I don't disagree with the Bard on much, but the whole 'rose by any other name' thing is a crock of shit, in my opinion. I doubt that he really believed it himself; I think it was just a rhetorical device.

In other news, I've been getting my writing playlist set up - had to load up both discs of Telltale Signs on my laptop. I might put some selections from Golden Vanity on there too.

NaNoWriMo ponderings

Well, I've officially signed up for the mass lunacy that is NaNoWriMo, along with my friend Kirsten. Should be fun! I've been thinking a lot about what my subject should be, and I think I've come up with a workable idea...

My main character will be Anna, a 33-year-old woman who several years ago went through most of a pregnancy, but ended up having a stillborn. During the pregnancy, she'd worked really hard to do everything right, but the baby died. Now she's single and pregnant again, but basically acting like kind of a fuckup. She's a cook/bartender at a local pub and bookstore in a small, artsy/touristy town. She's lived there for years and has a big group of friends in the community, but she doesn't want to tell anyone she's pregnant for as long as possible. The story will basically focus on her emotional & mental journey through the pregnancy.

The other thing worth noting is that I think the theme song running through my mind while I write is going to be this beautiful version of the Bob Dylan song "Mississippi". We recently got a CD where he performs a really quiet, sweet, husky acoustic version of it that has been haunting me.

These are the song lyrics:

Mississippi

Every step of the way we walk the line
Your days are numbered, so are mine
Time is pilin' up, we struggle and we scrape
We're all boxed in, nowhere to escape

City's just a jungle, more games to play
Trapped in the heart of it, trying to get away
I was raised in the country, I been workin' in the town
I been in trouble ever since I set my suitcase down

Got nothing for you, I had nothing before
Don't even have anything for myself anymore
Sky full of fire, pain pourin' down
Nothing you can sell me, I'll see you around

All my powers of expression and thoughts so sublime
Could never do you justice in reason or rhyme
Only one thing I did wrong
Stayed in Mississippi a day too long

Well, the devil's in the alley, mule's in the stall
Say anything you wanna, I have heard it all
I was thinkin' about the things that Rosie said
I was dreaming I was sleeping in Rosie's bed

Walking through the leaves, falling from the trees
Feeling like a stranger nobody sees
So many things that we never will undo
I know you're sorry, I'm sorry too

Some people will offer you their hand and some won't
Last night I knew you, tonight I don't
I need somethin' strong to distract my mind
I'm gonna look at you 'til my eyes go blind

Well I got here following the southern star
I crossed that river just to be where you are
Only one thing I did wrong
Stayed in Mississippi a day too long

Well my ship's been split to splinters and it's sinking fast
I'm drownin' in the poison, got no future, got no past
But my heart is not weary, it's light and it's free
I've got nothin' but affection for all those who've sailed with me

Everybody movin' if they ain't already there
Everybody got to move somewhere
Stick with me baby, stick with me anyhow
Things should start to get interesting right about now

My clothes are wet, tight on my skin
Not as tight as the corner that I painted myself in
I know that fortune is waitin' to be kind
So give me your hand and say you'll be mine

Well, the emptiness is endless, cold as the clay
You can always come back, but you can't come back all the way
Only one thing I did wrong
Stayed in Mississippi a day too long

(Copyright ©1997 Special Rider Music)

I've decided to just write the story on this blog, so that I can access it from anywhere and I don't have to cart my laptop around all month. I keep having these little vignettes appear in my head, and I'm dying to write them down, but that would feel like cheating.

Reemergence...

So, you might wonder why the 10 and a half month hiatus on this blog... well, here's the deal.

The day after my last post here, I found out I was pregnant. Talk about kicking off the new year with a bang. Suddenly all of my energy was pouring into research about having a healthy pregnancy. In the meantime, all my creative energy disappeared - I think it was all going into building our daughter Abigail.

But then Abigail died, about five weeks before she was due. Suddenly all of my energy was pouring into grieving, and grieving hard. But as usual, when the chips were down, my creative energy came flowing back and I wrote a ton of poetry, which helped me heal.

It's been a couple months now, and I've mostly passed through the fog of grief and am returning to normal, or my new normal, I suppose. Close enough to normal that I am actually considering the insane task of participating in NaNoWriMo with a friend of mine. If you're not familiar with NaNoWriMo (I wasn't, until my friend mentioned it), it's basically this mass insanity where people try and write a 50,000-word novel during the month of November. For all you non-math-people out there, that would be nearly 1700 words a DAY. (Why they couldn't do this on a month with 31 days, I have no idea. I guess I should be grateful that they didn't chose February.)

It's kind of a cool concept, though. It pretty much leaves no room for second-guessing oneself or procrastinating on writing by eternally re-editing what you've already written. Now if I can just settle on a story idea, I'll be set...

I do have several half-ideas floating around in the transom of my brain, but none of them have really spoken to me. Don't think I want to restart my GAN, necessarily... Guess I still have a couple weeks to figure it out...