Ok, I'm not super serious about this, but I'm having regrets about naming one of my main characters "Cunningham." It's a long name, and I use it often, so I feel as though I've wasted valuable time typing it out since it only counts for one word. Also, regretting naming one character O'Malley. I can't count the number of times that name has been incorrectly capitalized as O'malley, and I'm sure I missed an apostrophe at least once.

What have you done in your novel that you regret?

Here are some of my regrets.

1. In my story, initially I made my main character 13 and her younger brother 8. In a matter of a couple days (story narrative time) they became 17 and 15.

2. I regret using contractions like won't did't etc. This is a double regret you could day. I have spelled them out in the past and then when I edit I regretted having to put them back in.

3. I regret making my story boring. That fortunately I remedied by [ ] the dull part and rewriting the scene. You could say now I don't regret that because my remorse moved me to make my story more exciting!

Oh, if all of my life's regrets were as easy to remedy as in my story world.

Dave

I regret not looking back on my notes for this idea before I starting planning it out. Now I'm realizing I left out a huge facet to the story I was really excited about. Oh well. That's why we edit.

I see that word count as crossed over 50k, Dave. Congratulations!

I regret using the last name "Hernandez" for one of my characters. Every time I write it in the possessive, I have to think about how it should appear. "Hernandezes," "Hernandezes'"....it's all very muddy.

"Hernandez's thing." "The three Hernandezes." "The Hernandezes' things." ... Yeah, I can see where that would get seriously annoying.

Thanks, it has been a good Nano for me this year. You are doing well also, impressive word count.

Thank you! The challenge will be untangling it all and deciding what stays and what goes.Thatis where I usually flounder.

I'm having a similar problem with a character named Jules. She might get a new name at some point, just so I can avoid that issue!

I regret not researching both near-light-speed travel and artificial gravity more thoroughly beforehand... I'm not going for hard sci-fi but unless I assume the theory of relativity is wrong, neither of those are happening the way I envision.

I don't know why it didn't occur to me as I was outlining! I might have to avoid names that end in 's' and 'z' from now on.

This is exactly why I'm so obsessive about not giving characters names that end in S.

Wait... I did that this year, didn't I? Huh... Shows you how little I've actually written. Gus hasn't owned anything yet.