The fourth Paul Robertson book—which I’m now searching for a title for—has now sailed past seventy-one thousand words and I’m working on Chapter Seventeen—which I anticipate having some fun with because… Well, because.

A couple of interesting things have happened this week as I’ve been writing. First, the character that I was talking about in this post has undergone her second name change in as many weeks. I received a lot of feedback from readers on StoriesOnline with some really good suggestions for the type of name I was looking for. I settled on one that I’d been considering anyway and made the changes to my manuscript with find/replace.

But I still wasn’t happy with it.

Then this week I happened to be listening to one of my Spotify playlists on the way into work and a song came on that’s been on “heavy rotation” for me for the past few months. The track is a couple of years old now, but that’s not important. What is important is that the artist’s name resonated with me as fitting the character I’m having difficulty with.

And the name could be used as a short version of a longer name and that longer name has other short versions.

It just worked.

So that character is on her third name of the process and I’m 99% confident that this will be her final name.

The other thing that’s happened is that I find myself softening on this character’s plot arc. When I conceived of her, I had a very clear plan for what her purpose in the story was. And had I gone through with it, she’d have been one of the least likeable characters in the series. But as I’ve said before, when it comes to plotting, I’m more of a Pantser than a Planner. I write by the seat of my pants. I take the plot where the characters guide me even if, in the end, I get them where I want them to end up.

And that’s what’s happened her. I’ve already said that her original name didn’t suit her. And that’s because as I’ve been writing her, I’ve sort of grown to love her and her personality. And I can’t make her out to be an unsympathetic character. I just can’t. In this case, she’s not going to end up where I had originally planned. She’s not going to do what I originally planned.

At least, not in the way I planned it.

I’m not particularly worried about that if I’m honest. The way I’ve set her up and what’s she’s doing in this story will still lead to what I need to happen happening, it will just be in a different way.

And it might even make the story better—if I can execute it well, that is.