Names

Today's blog will be about names. I love names. I own a collection of baby name books(I have to make my mom buy them for me because you get very weird looks at the check out when the cashier goes to ring up a baby name book and they see that you're just a teenager. I swear one day I'll make a shirt that says "I'm A Writer...I Like Names"...anyways getting off topic). Baby name books offer me a world of imagination. I can spend hours reading thru them. For every name I can come up with a story or a character to fit a story. Certain names give off certain looks to me.

Here are two examples of what I think of when I see two names. I'll use a boy and a girl name.


Girl Name: Blair - I see Blair as a pretty blond girl, maybe a dirty blond or a golden blond. I see her with a pretty smile and a mild temperment. She is a kind sweet girl, maybe a little lightheaded, but still rather smart.


Boy Name: Grayson - I see Grayson as either a dark guitarist or as a biker. He's the kind of person when your around him you get a chill. He's persinality is rather dark and he gives of a feeling of darkness. He probably has dark eyes and hair.
In the complete reverse Grayson could be a depressed boy who acts out for attention but really isn't mean or dark.


See I took two names and gave basic information about how I pictured the names. Anyone can do this and with any name. Someone might have a different view of a name than I do, That's what makes this fun. If your a writer and you have friends who write or even if your not this is a fun little activity and it's even more fun when you choose a name and your friends write what that name wmakes them think of and you compare and you can see how one name can look and feel different ways to different people. Give it a try, I'm sure you'll have a blast.


Love Always,
Laney

Publishing Dreams

August 28th, 2009 will be a day that I'll never forget. Today at 2:55pm I got my first good query letter. Now I didn't find this out until 10:00pm, but it was there. Thursday night I sent out three more query letters. It has taken me a month to gain up the courage to do it.


Last month I sent only one out and my hopes were very high, maybe a little too high and not the least realistic, but anyways I was horribly upset when it came back as a rejection. I understand rejection is part of life, but come on at fifteen most don't handle rejection, actually some adults in their thirties and forties don't. That one rejection, I'm ashamed to admit, sent me into what I call a "break-up state". I'm not exaggerating this, I cried all night and I was fairly moody the next day.

Luckily this only last for about two days, then I was back to normal, well as normal as you can be when you've been rejected. I've never gone thru much rejection of any form, and it is very unpleasant the little bit I have experienced. The rejection letter I received wasn't a form rejection, but a nice kind personal one...honestly I think a form rejection might not have hurt as much, but either way I was rejected. So my confidence was a little low, so I didn't send anymore query letters out.

Until this past Thursday, that night I sent out three. My logic was that maybe three rejections at once might hurt less than one rejection(I realize this is silly logic, but it is called Laney Logic for a reason, because only I would come up with it.) Promptly the next morning I had one rejection, actually two rejections. I still had hope of two good queries, and I went on with my day not expecting that sitting in my inbox was a gold ticket.

I worked late tonight so when I got home I preformed my normal pattern of logging into my Facebook account and my email accounts and doing the usual run thru to see what I had missed while I was gone. There in my inbox waiting to be opened was a email marked RE: QUERY. I was ready to explode then. I saved it for last and opened the other six emails first. Finally I opened it....and it was a request to see the first 100 pages of my book! I was so excited I screamed and scared my mom half to death. When she knew why I was screaming she started screaming too.

Then we started calling people and texting them and I Facebooked it. The whole world knew within ten minutes. I automatically replied with the request 100 pages, now the hardest part comes...waiting...more waiting. I'll most likely have to wait until sometime on Monday to find out. Monday feels like a year away. All day Monday I will be waiting for an email to come...this one email could decide my future. Well so now there is left to do is wait...wait...and wait. Patience is a virtue...it's just one I happened to be born without.

Well hopefully by my next blog I'll know my future...

Until then,
Thanks for Reading "Laney's Thoughts"

Love Laney