charles barrow's writing

I've hit a real hitch. My latest story is written and is being edited now (self edited - yes I own a fine toothed comb). I've been feeling good about the whole enterprise when, boom, out of nowhere I see a book cover that torpedoes my heart. It's the book's title that actually poses a problem for me. It name checks its main character in the title, an uncommon name which, unbelieveably, I've also given to a main character in my story. W.T.F? I'd not seen this book before, so it is a complete coincidence. I might have thought 'Ah well, whatever.' and still gone with the name if the book in question had been a little backwater publication, but it isn't. It's had great reviews, I notice, and some prominent publicity - which makes it all the more weird that I'd not seen it in bookshops or online thus far. Anyway, the upshot is that I have to find a new perfect name. A difficult, fraught, exasperating process which you'll know all about if you...

I listened to poet and author Frances Leviston talking on Radio 4's Front Row about her short story 'Broderie Anglaise'. It was nominated for the BBC National Short Story Award. She mentioned that she used the term broderie anglaise (the name for a needlework technique) as a 'place holder', a term she dropped into a sentence as she was writing so as not to stop the flow of words, fully intending to return and replace it with a different, more considered one. But, as it turned out, when she returned she realised she'd got it exactly right first time, so much so that she used it as the name for her story. My ears pricked up when I heard this. I've used place holders many times in my writing, doing exactly what Frances did, just dropping a similar, an associated, an 'almost the right word' word into a sentence when I can't think of the perfect one and don't want to pause or I'll grind to a halt. Usually, as I read back through what I...

I was doing a review of character names in The Stolen Days of John Mann and in The Darkening Days of John Mann. I've made that sound like a very complicated admin task involving a database, or at the very least a spreadsheet, but actually I have all my character names written in columns on a sheet of A4, pinned to the wall above my writing desk. Very low-tech. I had just written in a new, young female character, she'll enter stage right, say her few lines and then exit and probably never be heard from again. But still, I wanted to give her a decent name, and more importantly I didn't want to repeat one I may have used for another minor character. I have a cast of thousands now and can't keep track, hence the name list. Anyway, as I scanned through that list I realised, with a jolt, that I haven't used, discarded, or stored away a single name that has more than two syllables in it. And I don't know why that should be either. But it's odd isn't it? I fel...