How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love SPAM

SPAM. Everyone hates it. It clogs up your inbox and threatens to do nasty things to your hard-drive. But there is at least one aspect of this modern plague that is under-appreciated, a shiny silver lining in the mushroom cloud of Internet nefariousness.

It’s the names. Spam spews forth an unlimited supply of perfect pitch names for fictional characters.

In among the tawdry offers for penis extenders and bizarre investments (You too can own a Galapagos island!) are enough wildly inventive yet oddly appropriate identities to populate a tale of 20 cities.

For any struggling writer, its name nirvana.* Hans Whitlock. Jo Everett. Winfred Carey. Marcelo Coley. Neva McCabe. Araceli Velasquez. Lakisha Meier. Robyn Dick (or is it Dick Robyn?). I challenge any name-challenged writer to glibly dream up so many plausible names for so many imaginary characters so quickly.

You see, inventing character names has always stumped me. I’ll be daydreaming at my computer, trying to come up with story ideas. Invariably, I get stuck on my characters’ names. I’m constantly considering and rejecting them, mostly because my story ideas depend on real people in my real life, and I can’t quite recast them without getting all hung up on their fictional identities.

I don’t know how other writers do this. Turning to spam is surely a sign of laziness, not to mention a serious lack of creativity. But for me, raiding my junk mail cache is just plain fun. Junk mail names feel livelier. More real. I could see myself meeting any one of these folks for a beer.

Which gets me wondering, what would these spamsters look like? Some are obvious. “Jack McGee” would be late fifties, ruddy complexion, thinning brown hair, wearing a short sleeve shirt and tie, carrying a salesman’s case. Or Carlene Zappata: Long black hair, red fingernails, a gum-snapping, eye-batting coquette who works at the Winn-Dixie. Others don’t conjure up so easily. Araceli Velasquez? Not even sure which gender that is. Calin Mainetti? No clue. That’s what makes trolling spam so rewarding. Mysterious strangers show up in my inbox, defying easy categorization.

Spam is so productive, naming-wise, that I can’t help but muse: why not go further? Why not let these shadowy non-persons take on a little more responsibility, story-wise? Why not let them lead me, struggling author, into inventing, not just a character’s name, but the whole story? Let them carry their weight, do their bit, redeem their sorry spam-ish ways. I see it working something like this:

The kid walked up the worn wooden steps to the second floor, and pushed open an unmarked steel door. The smell of sweat and sawdust hit him, and in the murky half-light, he spied a short stocky man in a tee shirt. Leaning against a pillar, the man’s posture was relaxed, but the taut muscles in his crossed arms betrayed a coiled menace. The kid ambled over, feigning bravado.
“You Marcel Wheeler?” the kid asked , his voice cracking slightly with nerves and teenage hormones.
“Who wants to know?” growled the man.
“Name’s Jamar Merrit. I wanna be a fighter. Wheeler’s ‘sposed to be the best trainer in town. You him?”
“That’s my name. My friends call me Marty. But you can call me Mr. Wheeler. Let’s see whatcha got, kid.”

See? Nothing to it. Once you have the names, the story just flows! Had I tried this without benefit of spam, I’d still be scratching my head over names, never mind pesky details like plot or protagonists.

Try it yourself. Let the spam wash over you. Feel the names. Are they speaking to you? You must admit, they are a pretty colorful bunch! Spam is an unfortunate fact of life but I say, stop whining about it and do something constructive. If using spam helps you populate your first novel and just happens to lead to a book contract, so be it.

Just be careful not to click on any attachments. I’d hate for your hard drive to blow up.

*All names are taken directly from spam messages and therefore presumed fictional. The author apologizes to any living person coincidentally named herein, unless of course you are in fact a spammer, in which case, shame on you.