Titles, Titles Everywhere

Over the holiday madness, as I was going mad myself I had two really strong titles hit me that I had to write down immediately. I don’t know if this has ever happened to you before, but I have no clue what the stories that are attached to these titles are and that’s kind of scary. The good news is that, if I do say so myself, these are two damn good titles and I knew right away that at least one of them has to become a novel, not a short story. The bad news is that I’m not sharing them with you. You’ll have to think of your own good titles.


What I find the most interesting of all this is the fill-in-the-blank mentality I’m now in with the stronger of the two titles. I’m thinking about this new character and piecing his life and plot together in a very backwards (to me) way. I’m learning about a brand new character and trying to find out what makes him tick before I even know what happens/happened to him.

I usually keep a running document on my computer and a notebook in my purse so anytime something hits me I can jot it down quickly before it disappears. If you don’t do this already, then you should start. I’ve caught accents, bits of dialogue, descriptions, thoughts, and characters going throughout my day and having had a place to put these immediately was key to working with it later. Without my running documents, these new titles, and the really good one, might not have been held onto and this amazing story that’s now brewing in my mind wouldn’t be “slouching toward Bethlehem to be born.”

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