Someone asked me recently if I start a story with a character’s name or or if I start with a story. Here’s what I told them.

Names don’t matter. They just don’t. Falling in love with a character’s name is vanity. We all do it. In middle school, I wrote about girls named Tygre and Sapphire. That’s how you knew they were special, you see. I abandoned that sort of mental dick-jerking pretty quickly. Cutesy names, perfect names, haunting or evocative names… none of them matter. Vanity.

If you don’t...