What do you call it?

What's in a name? that which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet;

Romeo and Juliet, Act II Scene II 

Predictably, this principle is not widely embraced by the publishing industry. After all the title of a book sets the tone, hints at its genre and is the first opportunity to draw the reader in.

Word count: 390            Reading time 1-2 minutes

Some members of my Young Writers’ Club were surprised to learn that the author doesn’t always get to name his/her own work but the trend isn’t new. When F. Scott Fitzgerald submitted his novel Trimalchio in West Egg, to Charles Scribner’s Sons, the publishers hated the title. Only at the insistence of editor, Maxwell Perkins, did he change it to The Great Gatsby.

I’m thinking about this a lot lately because my first novel is in the structural editing stage. Once this is completed, I suspect I’ll be asked to offer alternative titles for it. I’m working on that list now and I’ve found several helpful sites:

• I might do what some famous writers have done and take my title from existing literature (examples from that page include: East of Eden, Of Human Bondage, Tender is the Night)
• If my novel were fantasy, I’d go here: Random Fantasy Title Generator. In fact I pushed the generator button several times just for the fun of it.
• I’ll consider Scott Berkun’s hints and keep my titles short, provocative, memorable, and easy and fast to say.

The main thing most sites seem to agree on is the need to create a number of alternatives to work through. Frankly I like Lockdown for my work-in-progress (wip). It’s short and evokes the dystopian theme of the novel. Maybe I can do better though so I’ve started a list and when the novel is ready for the final spit and polish, I’ll have a number of alternatives to offer Great Plains Publications. In the meantime, to quote Raymond Chandler in a letter to Alfred A. Knopf, “I’m trying to think of a good title for you to change.”

Whatever my novel is eventually called, I hope it will be a sweet read.

How do you arrive at the titles for your work? Have you picked a perfect one, only to have it changed? Are you making a list for your wip, or are you waiting until it’s finished for more inspiration?

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Photo of Fragrant Rose Cloud from Wikimedia Commons

Are you a thief?

Walt Disney’s Cinderella was based on a fairy tale collected by the brothers Grimm. Marissa Meyer’s wonderful adaptation of the same story, Cinder, made the New York Times bestseller list in 2012.

Word count: 305           Reading time: 1-2 minutes

I bet Cinderella, as published by the brothers Grimm in 1812, was only one of many versions being told by the oral storytellers of the day.

‘Filter any single incident through another set of eyes, it becomes a different story’ Ellen Hopkins, Flirting with the Monster.

Helen Fielding watched the 1995 BBC drama, Pride and Prejudice, and re-worked the plot into her classic novel Bridget Jones’s Diary. She even based the BJD romantic lead on Colin Firth who played Mr. Darcy to Jennifer Ehle’s Elizabeth Bennet. In doing so Fielding created a mini-industry that just keeps paying and paying.

Picasso said it best: art is theft. But there is good theft and bad theft, and writer Holly Lisle gives some hints here: How to (legally and ethically) steal ideas on the difference between the two. Austin Kleon offers more guidance in his book Steal Like an Artist:

Good theft: honours, studies, credits, transforms, and remixes. It takes from many sources, not just one.

Bad theft: degrades, skims, plagiarizes, imitates, and rips off. It takes only from one source.

David Bowie said, “The only art I’ll ever study is stuff that I can steal from,” and most of the time, that’s how I pick my reading list. I lift ideas from other writers and if my remix is detected, I hope I've done justice to the original work. 

Have you stolen any good ideas or techniques lately? Have you read an author that made you break out in goosebumps and if so, did you do something to honour that experience? How do you stop your admiration of someone’s work from slipping into plagiarism?

What's it all about?

I wrote my first thank you letter in either grade one or two. An aunt in England used to send me a book every Christmas, wrapped in brown paper and tied with thin cotton string. We didn’t have a lot of relatives and she was the only one who sent presents, so my gratitude was heartfelt.

Word count: 329   Reading time: 1-2 minutes

I never did meet this great aunt, this sister of someone married to someone related to my father. She was a stranger in a faraway land and I studied her neat handwriting and wondered at the magic that connected us. The annual event of her gift spurred a tradition that became a lifelong habit of letter writing.

This habit peaked when I moved to Australia in 1987. In those pre e-mail days in Melbourne and Sydney, I wrote 8 to 10 letters a week. Which leads me to wonder, why did I write so profusely? I’ll let Anne Lamott answer that: [I] was desperate to communicate, to edify or entertain, to preserve moments of grace or joy or transcendence, to make real or imagined moments come alive.  (Bird by Bird)

Long before written language evolved, people sought to record their stories, first in cave paintings and then, 10,000 years later, in petroglyphs.

Laying down our stories has been a part of human psyche for a long time. Maybe we do this because of the reasons articulated by Natalie Goldberg in Writing Down the Bones, “[…] the secret ego truth is I want to live eternally and I want my people to live forever. I hurt at our impermanence, at the passing of time. […] I write out of hurt and how to make hurt okay; how to make myself strong and come home and it may be the only real home I’ll ever have.”

What are your memories of your earliest writing? What drives you to keep writing now? Do you know young people and what do you do to encourage their literacy?

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Painting of a bison in the cave of Altamira photo by: Ramessos

Is it better to give than receive?

From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life. Arthur Ashe.

Word count: 378    Reading time: 1-2 minutes

Consider Ashe's philosophy in view of the fact that February 14^th is International Book Giving Day. While this campaign primarily aims to get more books into the hands of children, giving a book to an adult isn’t a bad idea either.

Reasons to participate:

• If children develop a reading habit from an early age, who knows what might happen. They could become lifetime readers.
• Giving is good for the soul. It forces us to look outside ourselves, to think about others.
• Books are inexpensive gifts. In fact you don’t have to buy a new book for this special day; take one from your shelves or buy one cheaply at a second-hand store. The cost can be as low as you want to make it.
• Books are easy to wrap.
• If you decide to buy, you get to hang around a bookshop. Is there a better place to pass time? If you’re buying, please consider the One Book Pledge.
• Books are gifts that stay with a person for an entire lifetime.
• Both readers and writers benefit from the gift of books. After all, who are writers without readers?

Don’t know any children? Maybe you could speak to your local librarian and see if there are books the library cannot afford that you could donate. Maybe you could leave a book on a bus, in a waiting room, or at the local rec centre.

What books to buy? I’ve added my ideas to those from blogger North Wind:

• Determine your reader’s interests. Fiction? Non fiction? Favourite genres?
• What format do they prefer: e-books or paper and ink? Graphic novels or traditional?
• How well developed is their vocabulary?
• Check out goodreads for reviews and feedback.

When you give someone a book, you don’t give him paper, ink, and glue. You give him the possibility of a whole new life. Christopher Morley. That doesn’t mean you can’t still give them a chocolate heart also. It is Valentine’s Day after all.

Is there a better gift than a book? When you select a book for a friend, how do you choose which one?