Lisa Hendrix

NaNoWriMo, for those who don’t know, is National Novel Writing Month,  a period of insanity when writers all over the world commit to producing a completed novel of 50,000 words in 30 days (1667 words/day). NaNo has been going on every November since 1999, when only 21 writers participated. This year, over 130,000 writers have signed up.

I’m one of them.

But I’m not exactly playing by the rules. See, you’re supposed to start a new book, from scratch, at the beginning of NaNo. The idea is that if you don’t have anything on paper already, you’re free to let yourself go, tap new depths, reach new levels of writerly freedom. Or something like that.

But to start an entirely new piece, I’d have to stop working on Immortal Defender for a month, and  I don’t want to leave Torvald hanging that long. Besides, I’m on deadline and I simply can’t. Can. Not. So I’m going to use NaNo for my own purposes. My goal is to finish Immortal Defender during the next 30 days, leaving myself the whole month of December to edit and (here’s a concept) enjoy Christmas. I’m not writing a new book, but I will be doing the 50,000 words, at least, so I’m still meeting that part of the challenge.

I’ll be posting a NaNoWriMo widget in the sidebar that will reflect only the words I write during November, so  you and I can both keep track of my progress. I’m using the new NaNo version of Scrivener to do the drafting, and that counts daily words to keep me honest.

If any of you want to join in, it’s not too late. You can sign up on the NaNoWriMo site and jump in any time. You may have to do a little catching up next weekend, but that’s okay. I’d love it if you’d post your commitment below (I’d tell you to make me a Buddy on  the NaNo site, but I won’t be there except to log words).

If you’ve ever told yourself “Someday, I’m going to write a novel,” this is the time. Maybe it won’t be that lyrical bestseller that you dream of, but you will prove something to yourself: that you can finish a book. And that, my friends, is half the battle.

I ran into this lovely video from the Theater Department at the University of Kansas (coincidentally where my birth father went to college, and my husband’s father worked — although we didn’t meet until 30 years later, some 3000 miles away).  It’s a scene from William Shakespeare’s As You Like It, performed in Original Pronunciation. This is, more or less, how the audience at Wilton House would have heard the play in 1603, just 20 years after the time of my current work in progress, Immortal Defender. Defender is set in 1583, and features a cameo appearance by my heroine’s distant cousin, one William Shakeshafte of Stratford upon Avon. I hope you enjoy this little snippet of the past.

Everything, for me. As I’ve written before, I fuss and fume until I have the perfect name for my hero, heroine, secondary characters, the heroine’s lady’s maid…All those who speak must have the right name, or I don’t hear their true voices.

Unfortunately, that’s giving me fits in this series. First, I’m using characters from myth or history (or both), and for better or worse, those folks already have their names.

And a lot of them overlap. The Henrys, for instance. In writing Immortal Champion, which is the most history-based of the books so far, I had to deal with two Kings Henry (IV and V), and three Henrys Percy (grandfather, father, and son—and believe me, the Percys didn’t stop using the name there). There were also two Ralphs Neville (father and half-brother to my heroine), plus the family re-used a couple of names between the set of children from Ralph Sr.’s first wife and his second. Keeping them straight was a struggle, but by making up nicknames and calling folks by titles or last names, I think it all ended up clear.

Now I’m working on Immortal Defender, which takes place in the reign of Elizabeth I, where we bump up against the second part of the problem:  a tiny pool of historically correct names.

In the years right after the Conquest, there was a wide base of names to draw from. While Norman-French names quickly became popular, old Anglo-Saxon names like Godric, Tostig, Leofric, Waltheof, Godiva, Eadburgha, and Cynwise held on for generations, especially in the lower classes.  But by the time Elizabeth came along, most of those old English names had vanished. According to Janelle Lovelace, who compiled information provided by the Ashmolean Museum, there were only about forty names in common use for each gender, with another hundred or so in occasional use.

In fact, from 1530 to about 1700, 70% of men had one of five names (John, Thomas, William, Richard, Robert) — and a full 29% of all men (about 1 in 3.5!) were named John.  Women had it a little better, with nine names making up 70% of the population (Elizabeth, Joan, Margaret, Anne, Alice, Agnes, Mary, Jane, Katherine). And you thought Jacob and Emily were overdone…

The third problem arises from the number of characters I’m dealing with. Three books in, and I know I’ve already duplicated at least one name — I named a bad guy “Neville” in Immortal Warrior, not realizing Gunnar’s heroine in Immortal Champion, Eleanor, would be from a real family with the surname Neville. And with the quantity of secondary characters that appear in each book. I suspect there are several others. Some writers keep huge “bibles” of their series to ensure they never reuse a name. I figure that readers know that names recur and can keep everyone straight with a little help — just like in real life.

So I’m digging deep, looking for those one hundred less common names in use in Elizabeth’s England, and when I run into a truly unique name from that time during my research, I glom onto it. Still, I can hardly wait for my guys to live until an era when I have more names to choose from.

That’s what one of my Twitter buddies claims.

So skip on over to my Books page and click the link to the excerpt of IMMORTAL CHAMPION I just posted.

(And if you’re on Twitter, follow me there. I don’t autofollow back, but I always answer @replies. And if you’re not on Twitter…go give it a try. You can make me your first friend and I’ll help you learn your way around.)