I come to you with the letter “P” a day late . . . again, but as I said in the last post, procrastination works!
. . . as long as you eventually write something.
Last night at around 11PM, the clock winding down, I finally gave up on the post I originally had planned for yesterday. The creative river just wasn’t flowing as it was in O is for Outline. I spent more time looking ahead to the harder letters at the end of the alphabet, wondering how on earth I would be able to pull those off when I couldn’t even finish “P”!
I thought maybe if I shortened it, I would have a sharper, clearer vision of how I wanted the scene to go (since these posts are technically supposed to be only 300 words and I’ve been hitting 1000 most days—hey, I’ve been dealing with writer’s block for the past year; be happy I’m able to write at all). No such luck. So I tabled it and went to bed with the hope to return to the unfinished post in the morning, my mind refreshed.
Well, I’m back, I’m refreshed, and I have a totally new idea. In my post about location, I mentioned that I would set the events of Lost Boy in a fictional town. While using a real city probably isn’t as hard as I’m obviously making it out to be, I like the creative freedom of a made-up city. Of course, that would mean I’d have to think of a name, and you already know how hard that is for me.
I actually had to come up with two places: The town where Leslie, Stella, Tony, and the majority of the characters reside, and the the outer (or “inner”) city where Gregory lives with Tammi.
So let’s get into naming them.
In school, I read a lot of Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Scarlet Letter and “Young Goodman Brown” are the first titles that come to mind. If you’re unfamiliar with Nathaniel Hawthorne and his work, he was a Puritan novelist in the 1800s, and his fiction often featured moral and religious allegory. An allegory is a literary device used to suggest a specific meaning through metaphors, usually in names of places or characters.
Hawthorne’s use of allegory has definitely had an effect on my writing. Rarely do I create a title or name a place or character without first having some kind of symbolism behind that name. It’s why Tanisha’s name was changed to Tammi, why Lost Boy is still a temporary title, and why it has taken me up to letter “P” in the A to Z Challenge to think of a setting for the novel.
So I’ve done a lot of talking and still haven’t told you anything. Let’s cut to the chase, shall we?
Lost Boy will take place in Leiland, North Carolina.
Originally it was Leiland Brier, but it sounded too much like it belonged in a fairytale (thinking of Briar Rose, the pseudonym or mother of Sleeping Beauty depending on which version you read), so I shortened it to Leiland.
No research or special selection process went into coming up with this name. I spent more time than I wanted to Googling common city names, and nothing jump out at me. Then, like a light bulb going off in my head, the name Leiland came to me, and I ran with it.
Funny thing is, there is a Leland, North Carolina (pronounced the same, but mine is spelled with an “i”). It’s located on the southeastern coast of the state (where I also wanted to put my Leiland, but a little further inland, like around Fayetteville). It’s very close to Wilmington, NC, where my family is from, which is puzzling why I’ve never heard of this town before today. Nevertheless, let us not confuse the two Le(i)lands; mine is completely made up.
Because I’m so obsessed with symbolism in names, I decided to look up the name Leiland to see what it meant and if it would even work as a town name in this novel. Because it’s typically used as a boy’s name, I looked at a lot of baby name and mom.com websites. One website says it means “protective” or “protected land.” Another website says it is derived from a place name meaning “fallow land.” Of course, then I had to look up “fallow,” which means “left unplowed and unseeded during a growing season,” referring to farmland.
In trying to relate the two definitions, I realized fallow land is protected land. It is protected from the damage that comes with farming. Think about it. It would be unwise to farm the same land year after year. You’d be overworking it, and eventually, the once fertile soil will erode away, and the land will become useless for growing crops, or even grass. A successful farmer knows to give his land a rest every so often. It’s even in the Bible. God instructed the children of Israel to work the land for six years, but in the seventh year, the land was to have a year of Sabbath rest to the Lord (Leviticus 25:1-4). When I hear the word Sabbath, the first thing that comes to mind is holy. (“Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy” [Exodus 20:8]). Holy means set apart; dedicated to God. Bringing it back full circle, is fallow land not land that is set apart?
So let’s look at my fictional town of Leiland, North Carolina again. By the above definitions, symbolically Leiland is set apart, protected under God. Leslie, a devout Christian and avid church goer, lives in Leiland. In contrast, her son Gregory moves out (from under the authority and protection of God) to live with Tammi and gets into all kinds of trouble.
I think the name of the city where Gregory and Tammi live will be a little more overt in its symbolism: Pleasant’s Edge. A city right outside of Leiland, Pleasant’s Edge is where the bank robbery takes place, it’s where the landfill and crime infested trailer park are located. Nothing good ever happens in Pleasant’s Edge. As the name suggests, symbolically it is just beyond the edge of (God’s) love, (God’s) forgiveness, (God’s) peace, and (God’s) protection. It’s just beyond the edge of having faith and pleasing God. This is were Gregory goes, similar to an exile, like the children of Israel, who were exiled from the promised land because they turned away from God.
And so the story will be about bringing Gregory back…
—Nortina
Nortina's Writing Inspiration Well 