titles

Of Titiles and Dentists

So if you go to the dentist and they give you nitrous oxide and you try to think about anything else except for the fact that you’re at the dentist and you tell yourself to come up with a really good title for your WIP to keep yourself from thinking about the fact that you’re at the dentist, and then you do. 

Well it’s probably no good, right?

So then if you drive home with the windows down inhaling lots of fresh air and listening to the silence and you keep saying the title over and over again and try on all the different meanings people might come up with behind the title but then you realize that you really hadn’t much to eat all day and you probably still have some nitrous floating around in your brain you could probably convince yourself that it wasn’t the right title after all.

Right?

And then later, like HOURS and HOURS later, after lots of water and a nice dinner, if you tentatively say to your husband, “I think I have a title for Plant Kid’s book,” and then you tell him and he doesn’t run screaming from the room but instead says, “Hey I really like it!”

Well then maybe it might be safe to think you came up with a really good title after all.

Right?

That’s what I’m hoping.

Thursday, May 29, 2008|Categories: Writing Process|Tags: , |18 Comments
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I lied

Plant Kid’s book has a title.

I think.

Maybe.

No, I’m not telling yet but I think it is enough for a working title.

I hope.

Friday, May 2, 2008|Categories: Writing Process|Tags: , |6 Comments
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Friday Five – in which I ponder titles

Okay, I can’t manage a poetry Friday post today but I’ll try for a Friday Five which, I’m not sure, I think means five short snippets of something that do not have to be related. (Feel free to correct me.)

1 – A title for a new book came to me but it’s not a book I want to write yet. But it is a perfect title. I also have the perfect opening line. But it is about something that really happened to me, something I am still living through, so I can’t write about it, yet, because it is about someone who would probably not appreciate it at ALL. But it’s a great title.

2 – The WIP which also has a perfect title (which, if you read my Teaser Tuesday post you already know) necessitates some research including, most likely, flying lessons.

3 – The other WIP (I can’t help it, I want to write them both right now) has a perfect character and a lot of terrific scenes are coming to (though they have yet to make it out of my head and onto the page) but alas, it still has no title. Which means, probably, it can’t be a WIP yet because I can’t write it without a title. 

4 – And the verse WIP has a bunch of very interesting dark poems and yet ANOTHER perfect title but absolutely ZERO plot to hold it together.

5 – I am good at titles. Really good. Now all I need to do is figure out how to get paid for just coming up with great titles.

Friday, October 12, 2007|Categories: Writing Process|Tags: , , |19 Comments
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a question about titles

I’m a title kind of gal. You know the type, the one who can’t start writing a book until they have the title. And I mean it, really, I can’t skip this step. Without the title the book just flops around in my brain like the proverbial fish out of water. And I’ve been really lucky thus far in that none of my titles have been changed. So I get attached to them.

So here’s the thing. I have this title. It feels pretty darn good for the new WIP. It is also the MC’s name but it speaks a lot about the story. It feels right.

But.

But there’s another book out there with the same one word title. And that book is more of a YA romance/chick lit sort of thing. And mine is not.

So would you use the the title or not?

Tuesday, October 2, 2007|Categories: Writing Process|Tags: , |27 Comments
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