What's in a Name

I nominally completed my "What's in a Name" challenge story last night, but the Nizhny-Novgorod section (intended to be the actual story of 'how Erik got the name Erik') came out about as long as the entire rest of the story put together, which means that after I thought I was on track to squeeze in well below the word limit I have probably now gone over. The current page count on the manuscript is 43 pages at about 200 words each, and I *think* the terms of the challenge stipulate 8000 words or less (yet again I'm currently locked out of the site, even the normally-accessible forums and author pages, by Cloudflare, and can't check right now).
( Edit: finally able to get in again. )

To be frank eight thousand words in itself is a pretty generous limit; going over four thousand can be hard work on the reader, especially if the prose is turgid, and I think the shorter length requirement makes in principle for a better competition entry. However, what I've ended up with is in effect a two- or arguably three-chapter story (plus the backstory of how Erik got to Nizhny-Novgorod via Bohemia and Vietnam, but that can't easily be split out from the final chapter) being run as a one-shot, and arguably it might be better simply to upload the first scene as the actual challenge entry, since that also meets the 'about a character's name' requirement as a standalone narrative.

Although I expect the entire story would benefit from a bit of trimming, and it would probably be possible to get it down under eight thousand for submission -- apart from the fact that the challenge entries have to be uploaded by May 31st! I don't actually think the later section is as strong as the first, not least because I had Erik randomly murder someone in order to simplify my plot, then had to justify why he wasn't solving every other problem by murdering people who might pose a threat the moment he set eyes on them :-( Basically the story has come out as an extended exercise in writing in the third without naming one's protagonist and without making that fact (I hope) too obvious; the problem is that Erik simply doesn't think of *himself* by any of the names he goes under in the course of events...

What's in a Name (ch1?)

Sticking this up here un-proofread and un-edited for consideration: this would be my putative first chapter, to be submitted on its own as the challenge entry. There are 3330 words here in about 19 pages of manuscript, which suggests that the full story could sneak under the line at about 7500 words in total; on the other hand, for reading purposes this makes a nice self-contained episode, it focuses in on the idea of the name Chrysostome, its drawbacks and how he manages to get rid of it, and lengthwise it feels like a comfortable read (it's a customary chapter length by my usual standards). I still have a suspicion that reading the whole thing in one gulp might feel a bit like hard work...

Edit: as expected, the whole thing was of course riddled with typos and creatively miscopied phrases :-p

What’s in a Name?

“He should not have been born, and having been born, should have had the good grace to die and spare the world from the spectacle of his existence. Nobody had ever made any secret of that.” Written for Writers Anonymous “What’s in a Name” challenge.

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“Il me répondit qu’il n’avait ni nom, ni patrie, et qu’il avait pris le nom d’Érik par hasard” — Ch13, La Lyre d’Apollon

A/N: It was always my head-canon that Erik never reveals his real name, even to Christine, simply because it was actually Narcisse or Hyacinthe or something else terribly embarrassing! As for the name of Erik, of course, he acquired that ‘by chance’...

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His own father referred to him, when he was forced to acknowledge the boy’s existence, as ‘the creature’ or ‘that thing’. From other adults in their neighbourhood he had overheard worse names, such as ‘monster’ or ‘unnatural spawn’; he had known since he was old enough to walk that by his very existence he was a stain on his family, and a target whenever he showed his face for casual stones “to drive the devil out”. He should not have been born, and having been born, should have had the good grace to die and spare the world from the spectacle of his existence. Nobody had ever made any secret of that.

His mother, buxom, devout and all too often smelling of wine —and this, too, he knew from what he had overheard, had been brought about by his birth— had bestowed upon him the fanciful name of Chrysostome in a fit of fervour, since his father had refused to name the deformed little creature at all. Old Mother Albine, who had been in attendance at the birth, had told him once, cackling, that the horror of his face and the sickly colour of his skin had been such that everyone had believed the infant already dead. He had been left to one side on a pile of soiled linens, with a cloth drawn across to hide him from his mother’s sight, while Albine and the other women worked to deliver the afterbirth. He had drawn his first breath without human assistance, and clung to life with a thin, outraged cry.

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