Children's names in stories

I've been busy with a new client for the past week, and realized I hadn't blogged for a while. Something that struck me as I was critiquing/editing some work of children's writers recently ---the frequent use of names that were popular in the 50's, 60's or even 70's, but that parents almost never name their children now. Examples I've seen include Cindy (plenty of Sydneys out there, but no Cindys anymore, thank goodness. What were my parents thinking?), Susie, Larry, Lynn, Laura and Tommy (though there are plenty of Thomases.) Names like Devin, Aiden, Conrad, Kylie, Mackenzie, Jayden, Peyton, Nolan, Sterling, Trinity, Kaz, Carson, Sierra, Myka, Elijah, Marshall, Holland, Graham and Spencer are the norm these days. (Most of these I grabbed directly out of our elementary school's directory.) When I see a story with characters who have outdated names, I tend to think the writer is rather disconnected from children. Often the writer may be somewhat older and unaware of current naming trends. But there's an easy fix---you can go to any of the zillion baby naming sites and find out the most popular 100, or 1000, names of any given year. That way you'll choose names for your characters that sound fresh and modern and won't make you seem out of touch.

I'm a winner!

I've won a free picture book critique from an active group of writers whose website is called www.thewritemarbles.com. Thanks to my critique partner, Rachel, for letting me know about it! The free critique was inspiration enough for me to dust off an old, troubled manuscript called "The Ribbon Dance." It's been fun revising it. I've cut it by 400 words, eliminated two unnecessary characters, and generally focused it much better, so it feels more like a viable picture book now. I'll be ready to email it to the "Marbles" later today. How fun to get perspectives from a brand new set of writers!