Life can be so weird.
Eating lunch and reading The Isle of Future Past, a Dragon Core novel.
And smirking as I note how easily I’m taken back to various moments of fingers to keyboard for this story.
It’s as if I slip inside my former “writing” self to feel see understand everything felt, seen, and understood at the exact moment I typed the scene.
What’s in a Name?
More than you might think.
For this particular reflection I’ll point out that for me one of the more challenging aspects of the novel is coming up with character names.
First names, surnames, nicknames.
Scenes and character characteristics are easy.
Say that ten times real fast.
Imagery of both flow into my consciousness, sometimes before the plot does.
As happened with the Hangover Series.
What stirred this hoopla of cognizance?
Anika.
What’s in a Name? Seriously? A lot!
While Anika is a common enough name in certain circles it never was in mine.
So, where did it come from?
Transitions and the Band.
There came a time when my parents separated.
My mom, brother, and I moved into a rental townhouse in an incredible school district. Across from an auto factory it was – I learned from new classmates – the place where the poor people lived.
Wasn’t that kind of them to clue me in?
As I played b-flat clarinet I was more than happy to join the band.
Where along with the other musicians I could tune out life.
So, Anika?
We were a pretty small band. What I noted immediately, other than the fact we were crammed – an obvious junior high afterthought – into a tiny room barely bigger than a storage closet…
Looking back I suspect it was a storage closet.
was that we had a saxophone player who was a female!
I started band in 4th grade playing drums but the nuns were adamant girls didn’t play drums and went on the war path until I capitulated and switched to clarinet.
I’d wanted to play saxophone after coming to physical exhaustion fighting the nuns but apparently that too was sacrilege and such is how I ended up – thanks to help from my dad – playing b-flat clarinet.
Emotionally and physically exhausted – and a bit heartbroken about not being able to play drums – I was ready to quit band altogether. Upon hearing this my dad who’d won awards playing piano and who played drums zipped out that night to a music store and brought home a clarinet he put together and handed to me to give a try.
No Nuns But Same BS
Though a public school our conductor was less than enthusiastic about a girl who played saxophone.
When she refused to switch to clarinet or flute like the rest of us girls he tried dissuading her by putting her in the percussion section instead of with the woodwinds.
I will never forget that chin thrust out in defiance even as she was drowned out by the percussionists that included the lone brass player.
Or how succinctly she told him off for doing so.
Her name?
Danika.
I wanted to honor her spirit but didn’t feel comfortable using her name.
Go figure.
Each and every time I read the name Anika in my story I’m taken back to that day and that woman’s spirit
Being different and made to be an outcast not by our self but by someone else’s choice.
A spirit that helped me through a challenging time in my own life; a challenge she had no idea I was going through.
She was like a prickly cactus. We never got to be friends.
It’s a good memory because I still remember her telling him it was a load of shit putting her with the drums and a tuba so she couldn’t be heard.
Note: I don’t feel I let myself down switching. I weighed the reality of what I was dealing with and decided my dad’s advice – given years earlier when the nuns were calling me the devil’s child for being left-handed and threatening me if I didn’t switch to right – to pick and choose my battles – was best
My ambidextrous self approves.
After 13 years playing clarinet including Tchaikovsky in orchestra I took up piano and – for a very short time as balm for my soul – tenor sax. Today I prefer to listen to music than play.
Expressing my creativity with the written word.
Elizabeth Maxim 
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