As I plow through some line edits, I am once again struck by what a very aural writer I can be. I have been known, at times, to put down homophones of the word I mean write. (This can get very confusing to copyeditors, editors, critique partners. I’ve been in situations where I get back critiques where I’m incredibly confused, though clearly not half as confused as the reader, who has been wrestling with the text and trying to come up with a rational interpretation for whatever it is I’m accidentally saying — such as the sudden appearance of a grizzly sighting on the streets of Rome or an island off the Florida coast.
It may be a reason I wrestle so with names, because to me, it’s the sound of a name that really affects my interpretation of it. I was at a workshop about names with writer Jo Beverly a few years back, and she rocked my world by explaining that the name Caitlin, so common in America (pronounced “Kate-lyn”), is in Wales pronounced “Kath-leen” (and in Ireland “Koyt-hleen” and if you go on the internet, people argue about it constantly!)
One of my CPs, by contrast, is very visual. It doesn’t matter to her as much what the names sound like, as long as they don’t look the same. She’s very conscious of how many names start with the same letter. (Since I am writing a book series with a Jenny, a Josh, and a Jamie, you can see that it’s not something I notice as much!) After reading an early draft of my latest book, she asked if I’d intentionally given an uncle and his niece the names Cornelius and Cornelia. (Yes. And their nicknames are way different.) And that, on top of a Caitlin (the American way), was too much for her.
And on the other end of the spectrum, I guess that also depends on how you pronounce things. For example, I do not pronounce the word Mary like I pronounce the word marry, so I missed out completely on a joke that one of my CPs other readers kept making in regards to her manuscript. However, I am aware of unintentional rhymes I may have built into my own work.
What about you? Do you notice sounds or signs?
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