Okay, so I've been dabbling with a new novel. They were honestly words of intuition. I have done no planning. No plotting. No saving of cats or beating of plot lines.

I was just writing.

And I realized as I was going along that I have a writerly quirk. It's names. I re-use the same names over and over again.

Ruby, for one. And the last name Carpenter must really sing to me for some reason. I think I've used it four times, in four different novels.

But that's not all, my friends! Oh no! I steal names too. From critique partners (Joel), and family members and students and billboards (come on! You've done it too!).

I really don't get this quirk. There are like, a bajillion names. And I'm choosing the same ones over and over again?

Pathetic. (Ha!)

Do you have any writerly quirks? What are they?

Okay, so there's some confusion about my name. I wholeheartedly blame my parents. I mean, seriously, Mom and Dad? So anyway, since it's my name and I'm using it and all that, I'm here to clear up the confusion.

Number 1: I only have one E in my name, and it's at the beginning. The other two vowels are both A's. elAna.

*insert song "My name is Jonas"* It's all I'm thinking as I write this post. "My name is Elana..."

Number 2: You say it "Uh-lay-nuh." Well, that's how I say it. If you're my dad, you say "Ee-lay-nuh." Sometimes my husband says it like this too, and sometimes I do, if I'm in a more formal situation. Go figure. But it is not Ee-lawn-uh.

So yeah. I pretty much answer to anything. And if you forget, just put an I in it. Ela(i)na, and go with that.

Okay, phew. That's off my chest.

Do you guys have a name no one can spell right or pronounce? Does your main character? Because I think that's pretty uh, not good. I don't want to guess at how to pronounce your MC's name. So yeah. Things to consider. And now when we meet in person, you won't have to avoid using my name. (Not that that's ever happened...)

Just as a sidenote, I can't type female without a mistake. I always, always, type femail. And then I have to go back and fix it. Just so you all know.

Anyway, I went searching for the article I was talking about when I said agents (and obviously not ALL agents, there's like a million of them) were pontificating about the usage of the letter A in novels. I couldn't find it, and my brain broek with all the searching. So, yeah. I know I read it, I just don't...know...where. (Then Heather taught me a cool way to search in my google reader. She's kewl like that.)

I didn't find exactly what I was looking for, but I found some good stuff. Kristin Nelson weighs in on The Power of Names. And Jessica Faust posted on Alliterative Characters, which is sort of what we've been talking about.

*Snarf* That's a big sort of.

I just like to have a discussion about where we get our names and it's interesting to me to see where they all fall in the alphabet. I'm also going to really try to choose future names from the less-used letters of the alphabet.

But I'm a stat geek like that.

Anyway, here's the chart for the names you all submitted last week.


So interesting. "A" totally wins, hands down. And I only contributed one of those. Makes you go hmmm....Where was that article ElanaJ read? If you find it, let me know.

So, onward and upward to female main character names. I read somewhere, and I can't remember where, that agents were sick of seeing female protags with a name that started with A. Yeah, in the one book I had written at the time, my MC was named Annie.

Le sigh.

I actually don't mind this. But since my post on male names with the letter K, I've been paying more attention to names in everything I read. Queries, synop's, books, manuscripts, whatev. I read a lot of stuff. And you know what? I've noticed a lot of Seth's. As the bad boy. One of my friends (Christine Fonseca) has a Seth in her WiP. I think she told me his name means something about darkness or choas or something. I'm sure she'll set me straight, and I'm too lazy to research it myself. I shudder just typing that R-word. *shudder*

But I haven't noticed that many A-names for girls. Maybe I'm just reading the wrong books, I don't know. One of my pals, Jessica Verday, author of The Hollow (which I get to read soon! Woot!) has named her MC Abbey. So there's an A. Oh, and Jenn, a real-life gal in my crit group just wrote a synop about a girl named Ava. There's two.

For me? I seem to choose pretty popular names. I wrote a book last winter with a Claire. That seemed to be a pretty popular name at the time. Lots of authors had Claire's. Sidenote: I need an eclair to get me through this week.

And of course, I have Vi, my Rule-breaking Good girl in Control Issues. And Gabby, my heroine-who-sometimes-pretends-to-be-the-hero.

Who have you got? There's major chartage in my future.

As promised, here are the results of last week's male main character survey. At the time, I really didn't think it would turn into a survey, but it so did. And I added my male MC names, and that totally skewed the results. Yeah, the J's just skyrocketed. Ahem. Obviously, that post should have been entitled, "What's With the Letter J?" instead of "What's With the Letter K?" (Click on that title if you have no idea what I'm talking about. Cuz it was great fun.)

So this first chart is the names with my MC names. (Jon, Jared, Jess, Jesse, Jarvis, Jake, Jag and Josh included. Holy crap. Just looking at that makes my eyes cross. Why do I write so many J names? Because my last name is Johnson? J's are made of kewl? They're funner to write by hand? Which of these are working for you??) Some of you left female names, which was great and all, but I only included the boys.


And the second chart is without my main characters. Hey, I had a Hunter, an Adam and Ames, a Gordon (the only G in the above chart. Ha), a Zenn, a Miller, a Cal, a Ty and many others I'm sure I'm forgetting. But here's the one without the barrage of J-names from yours truly.

Either way, the results are interesting. Quite a large clumping in the J-N range, just as I predicted. Hey, maybe I missed my calling in life as a statistician. I did complete a brief secretarial stint in the Stats Department in college. Anyway, after the middle letters, it seems a lot of us go for names that begin with letters at the beginning of the alphabet. Z had a nice showing, as did the popular Wheel of Fortune letters R, S and T.

So that leaves me wondering why. Kat asked this question on her blog last week. But it's a good one, so here goes. How do you choose the names for your characters?

I left her a comment, but I'll repeat it here. Most of the time I choose a name because it just fits, or I want to use a nickname. In my NaNo novel I chose Gabby (I know, I know, it's a girl's name, chillax) because I wanted to use the male name Gabe. And Gabby has to pretend to be a guy...so yeah. Her real name is Gabriella. She goes by Gabby when she's a girl (well, she's always a girl) and Gabe when she's pretending to be a boy. Are you confused yet? Yeah, me too, maybe that's why I haven't finished this novel yet.

In Control Issues, a futuristic science fiction novel, I wanted a funky male name. Heck, I wanted funky names for everyone. I named a girl Tyson, my male MC Jag, his brother Pace and the "other boyfriend" Zenn. In the sequel to that novel, which I tinkered with last summer, I watched American Gladiators to find kewl names. I had to look since it's been so long, but I found Gill, Nash, Fret, Van, Viggo and Xan.

And Jet.

Holey Swiss cheese.

Another J-name.

Smack me. Smack me hard.

Okay, I haven't been reading tons of books, but I have been reading tons of queries. And synop's. And reading writing/author blogs all over the Internet.

Here's my question for the day: what's with the letter K? It seems like every single male MC out there has a weird name that starts with the letter K (or a hard C, which makes the same sound). And I don't mean Ken.

No I mean, like Kendin. (I sincerely apologize if that's your MC's name. I just made that up. Srsly.)

Or Cotton.

Or Kornill.

Or something just so out there.

I mean, come on! What is with that? Are people not naming their boys normal things anymore? Where are the Jon's? (Yes, I'm extremely partial to that name.) The Trent's? The Jason's? The Landon's? Don't they deserve a story too?

I know this is my personal issue that I need to deal with. I'm just wondering if any of you can save me from the therapy fee I'm going to have to pay if the next book I pick up has a male MC with a K name.

Makes me wish I had named my boy kid Konanter.

*Snarf*

Anyway, so I started looking at the names of my male MC's. I've got Jon, Jared, Jag, Jesse (I even wrote a book about a Jess--a different book) and Josh. Apparently, I have an affinity for J-names. I also have Landon, Isaiah, and Hunter. Those are all safely in the middle of the alphabet from H-M. I even wrote a book with four brothers and their names are Jake, Kent, Luke, Mark. J, K, L, M. A character even comments on it.

This made me go hmmm.....and I love musing, so this was a good thing.

I also have Adam, Cal and Zenn. So apparently, my guys are either at the beginning of the alphabet or huddled in the middle. Does this stem from our human nature that most of us don't want to go first, but we don't want to be last either? More hmmm...

So what are you male MC names? Let me know, and maybe I'll make a chart because I'm just that geekalicious. Or maybe because I'm teaching charts to 6th grade next week for the country fair and I need something kewl to show them. Yeah, lets go with that one.