Last Saturday, because I wasn't wearing my reading glasses, I misread a name in a magazine. I though the name was Tru-something. Curtis laughed and corrected me. That was that. I haven't a clue what the correct name was, who it belonged to, or why I read it. But I recall thinking what a powerful name True was. What it said about a parent who would name his/her child True. And what it would be like to have to grow up with and into that name the way the man in the Johnny Cash "my name is Sue/how do you do/you're gonna die" song did. I tucked the name in my I'm-going-to-use-that-someday brain file. Today, this morning, I was milling about, making calls, eating, drinking coffee, printing things, doing everything but pulling up the file with Otter Song to continue revisions, because I really, really didn't want to work on it anymore. I had reached a place where I was just sick of the whole mess. As far as I was concerned Lena, her mother, the otter and aquarium and the entire coast of California could crack off the way everyone is always threatening it will and I would have cheered. Damn the zillion hours and years I have already put into this story.

Finally, when there was absolutely nothing more I could pretend needed doing beside work, I opened the Otter Song file. Nothing had changed. It didn't send me. I had absolutely no desire to read on. I didn't care what Lena wanted or needed. What I really wanted to click the X and do something else--maybe go shopping.

Instead...

I clicked the Find and Replace function and changed the main character's name--in 492 places! (No, I did not go through them one at a time. Yes, I had been looking for ways to keep from working, but really....not even I am that desperate!)

ZIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING! With that click of a button, my main character went from boring to --interesting, exciting, even. It's as though she has suddenly come into her own. True is so much more now. She has a name to live up to. And I am charged with helping her realize her potential.

A rose by another other name might smell as sweet, but that's only if it compels one to sniff it.

It is all in a name.

• KELLY BENNETT •