Anyway, this non-profit organisation is called the B612 Foundation, named after the asteroid that was home to The Little Prince.
What the...?, I thought as soon as I read it, because today I plan to sub a spy story which features an A.I. I'd designated B-6.12. Of all the letters and numbers in all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, why did I, supposedly off the cuff, choose that particular sequence? Could it be because of the contents of my bookcase? It's been decades since I last read my 1977 copy of Le Petit Prince, but there it is, proof that I've been in contact with it.Possibly, Saint-Exupery's work left a little informational flotsam drifting about in the murky waters of my subconscious that I simply scooped up and typed in. That, or in a just as valid theory given the limited number of letters and numbers we have to work with, sheer utter coincidence is at work here. But let's also just add to this equation the fact that I read this article just in time to change B-6.12 to something else before subbing it, thank goodness. Possibly no-one would have noticed, or cared, but you just never know...
This is exactly why I get a little worried when stories come too easily. But, enough with the writerly angsting - it's time to get to work now. I've just been researching espionage terms for the final polish of my spy story, which I MUST sub today or I'll end up fiddling with it too much. After that, I'll embark on my latest and greatest idea for a suite of poems about practical cats, and then move on to that torrid mathematical romance of many dimensions that I think will knock 50 Shades of Grey off the bestseller lists.
4 comments:
My first published story had the Little Prince as a chracter of sorts. We had to riff off that story and an art exhibition we went to see to create a piece for Uni.
A happy, happy coincidence in your case, though.
Steve
Yeah, I'm going with coincidence too.
So, did your "Little Prince" live on a metaphorical or a real asteroid?
I workshopped a story recently, and group members universally gasped at the inappropriate name of my elderly portrait painter. Bella.
Okay, I'll 'fess up. I have read the first book of the Twilight Series. My excuse is that I'm a teacher. Well, to be quite honest, I enjoyed the first volume. (But I'm brilliant at ignoring bad prose, if I want to do so.)
I can't recall when I first drafted my story, but I reckon it was before I read the book.
Someone else in my workshopping group (online), a Canadian, had a story this week about John Barnaby, a young schoolboy, and one of the American members said the name was vaguely familiar. Then the Canadian remembered Midsommer Murders, which she doesn't even watch.
It sure is tricky trying to keep our ideas 'pure'.
Bella? Nooooo, say it isn't so ! :) Still, there's a perfectly fine character name rendered unusable now for a generation or two.
The other thing I occassionally worry about is character names meaning something bad or naughty in another language - I've been startled by examples just from the few languages I can cross reference. But writers are only human, flawed and limited, and we do the best we can. I suppose a good option would be to Google character names and see if anything obvious comes up, but who ever does?
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