What’s in a name?

So what’s in a name anyway? 

 

The name of your project is important. Not just to others so you can explain it to people but in my opinion   it gives it life. When I came up with the name for my first book it was hard! I remember playing with different ideas but nothing sounded good. 

Taking it all the way back to the beginning, the last line of the book was actually written before anything else. Crazy I know. So at the time I had lost a grandparent and I was really thinking about life in general. Mistakes and missed opportunity but more important wasted time in general. 

The title Here We Remain, was more about life after the event not so much the event itself. We all have setbacks or failures, but here we are after, so now what?  Are you going to wallow or shutdown? That’s fine if that’s what you want to do. As long as you realize that you are still here after all of that. 

In the book’s case yes there is a zombie apocalypse and all that but that’s only part of where our hero’s problems come from. 

Back to the way the name came about, I wrote that last line and played with the wording for a long time. The title wasn’t going to be that at all, I had maybe five bad ones. One of which was Security Team Z... it was so bad. Moving on, I looked at that last line repeating it out loud. I said it almost like a prayer, remembering people who were gone and those still here. Friends, family and what I hoped to accomplish. Here We Remain just felt right. 

Now after all of that I will say I’m happy I went that route instead of others. Something else I’ll leave you with about names, naming a character in the book. How do I do it? I hate it so much, maybe the worst part of the entire process to me. What I like to do to make it kinda fun and funny is looking around the room I’m in and picking a movie or book or whatever and taking a random pairing of names and boom we have a new character.

Let me know some of your least favorite parts of writing or creating. If you also hate naming things tell me why?  

Thanks for stopping in hope you will find your way back

-MH