A is for Alchemary

Meet Alchemary.

After ten years of muddling along as a side business with no formal organization and operating under my own name, which I also use for my editing business, my creative business finally has its own name and identity: Alchemary.

Why Alchemary?

The concept of alchemy has always intrigued me. The idea of turning ordinary materials into the extraordinary has drawn the human imagination for centuries. For the most part, I work with humble materials, and I like to think that my creations are more than the sum of their parts when I’m done with them.

My home studio is on the second floor, overlooking a wooded ravine and among the birds. An aerie is a high nest, a place of shelter while at the same time being a place from which one can look out over a vast expanse and drink it all in. I’ve been playing with this word for a while, combining it with different words to find a combination that appealed.

the view from my studio (summer, obviously)

I don’t often have trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep, but one morning this winter I awakened around four (ungodly early for me) and just could not get back to sound sleep. I floated around for a few hours in that place that’s mostly awake but also sort of dozing, playing with words and thoughts and dreams. Formalizing my business had been on my mind, and the last piece I needed before I could start taking action to push it to the next level was a name. I was thinking about the qualities that I want my work to embody, what I want the name to say about my work, and then it struck me: Alchemaerie.

It’s a lovely name, and says exactly what I want it to say.

I fired up the Notes app on my phone and entered it, bleary-eyed and half-asleep.

However.

It’s just about impossible for normal people to spell. Even I kept typoing it, and I work with words for my living. So, into the simplification hopper it went, where the “aerie” came out “ary.” Which still works, because “-ary” as a suffix means “belonging to or connected with.” Perfect.

And I know that the secret (or maybe not-so-secret now) origin of the “ary” is “aerie,” which gives the whole exercise a sense of mystery and a bit of play, which really appeals to me.

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So, that’s the name. I still have quite a bit of work to do: finalizing paperwork, deciding on my logo, opening a bank account and other accounts, updating my sales tax account, finalizing the new website, new business cards, and so on, and so on. But the biggest psychological hurdle is out of the way, so look out, world!