sythyry | OOC: in which the author realizes just where it has placed its head

Grumble! I just noticed in today's Sythyry story that I had trapped myself in one of my pet peeves in other peoples' writing.

When I am writing ordinarily, I pay a lot of attention to names. Individually I want each name to sound right, to bring the right feelings and connotations. That's going OK in this journal: "Sythyry" looks a bit exotic, but is short and reasonably pronounceable; "Hezimikkainen" is longer and twistier; etc.

When I write books, I also try to make the names look and feel different. I try to pay attention to the look and sound of the words, and change names that I think readers might confuse. (This is an allergic reaction to a famous novel in which two very important characters were both named Alexei.) The villain of the love-story-that-needs-a-title changed name four or five times to avoid this or that problem.

Of course, that only works if I plan the main characters in advance, or if I can go back and edit the whole document. Neither of which applies to Sythyry.

Which leaves me with two Orren men with short names beginning with 'Oo', and two Orren that Sythyry is or has chased with medium-sized names that begin with 'S'.

*sigh*

Anyways, my apologies for this. I'll try to make it clear which is which, but ... oops.