Sunday, February 3, 2013

Titles

Titles are hard.  I find that I either start my books with a really good title in mind, or write the whole thing without any clue what it's going to be called.  My hard drive is littered with drafts called 'Casey' (working title of Assignment 9) 'Chris', (working title of a still unnamed book - it's been called Downward Spiral at times, but it doesn't really work), 'Liz' (an unfinished book that will probably never be done) and of course 'Ozzy'.

I don't understand why titles are only sometimes a challenge.  Chasing the Taillights had that title right from when I fist conceived the idea.  The Boyfriend Plague too.  And my novella, Angels, Oddities and Orthodox Habits always had that title.

But after having wracked my brain for the entire writing process, I'm happy to have come up with a title for Ozzy other than its hashtag #virginamputee which sounds like a bad airline.  The title of my book is now Stumped.  It works on many levels....  Just trust me on that.

Do you find titles troublesome?  Or so they come as easily as breathing?

4 comments:

  1. Same here. Sometimes they come so easily, before I've written a word. Other times, my agent has to hound me because the book is ready to go on submission but has no title. No clue why that is.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm bad at titles, but I need to have at least a working title before I can write something. Even if it's bad.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Good to know I'm not alone here, guys!

    ReplyDelete