Titles

Junkdust arose out of combing drug slang until I found something that sounded nifty and worked for the plot (which is heavily drugged). It's probably the only time I've ever had a title I really liked straight away.

My novel is titled, A Slow Cartography, which has to do with the way one of the characters is sort of accidentally telling the story of the other characters without really knowing it, thus following and mapping their lives.

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2007 NaNo: A Slow Cartography - Finished at 60k
2008 JulNo: Hey, Jude - in progress

There's More to Life than This, You Know,
because my novel is being fed healthy doses of the Smiths, and because my protagonist is on an epic journey of self discovery and scorning standardized testing.

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2006: Stars Come Falling [10,000 words]
2007: There's More to Life than This, You Know [50,0128]

"Please kill me: the story of a grad student who is also an idiot"

It came to me as if in a dream.

"No Flood, But There Was an Ark Involved"

A main character named Noah + Kayak + an urge to become a zookeeper= enough said...

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Not done yet, two more chapters to go... then editing...

I'm writing in 3 genres, only got the horror one on my profile but here's my lit one:

The Song of Insects

Concerning a girl who, upon the anniversary of her mother's death, and also the night before her own birthday discovers a strange and wonderful world inhabited by musical insects.

PJ

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wordcount widgets

The Last Day of September. Because that's the day his life changes.

The Art of Conversation

Had done some research on Rene Magritte, since my MC writes a blog entry on him, and discovered this was the name of one of his paintings. Decided it would make a great name for my MC's blog, so I adopted it as the novel's title too.

I don't have one yet!! I have no idea what to call it!!

Where Heaven Meets The Earth.

Is about the point where free-loving, easy-going Poppy, who doesn't like to be held back by anything, and staid, solid Rob, who has his feet firmly on the ground and doesn't know how to dream of anything other than reality, meet in the middle - right where their sons are. It works as a concept in my head, getting it on paper is proving to be tricky.

And my light relief, And Yet So Far. As in, "So damn close...", because it's about emotional distance between yourself and someone you care about - how you can be sitting right next to someone, and still feel a world away from where they are.

The Sum Total of Being

and i love it. it feels so right i'm worried it's been used before.

'Crash'

It's probably been done before.

But hey. It's never been done my way before, right? :-)

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____________________________________
It's never too late to procrastinate

Afterwords Cafe

Because both my characters die and find that the afterlife is just a cafe where you talk about your life and deal with any remaining issues or whatever. I was considering "Afterwards Cafe" initially, because it takes place in the "afterwards," as some people call it, but "Afterwords" sounded much more nifty. Since, you know, there are words. 50,000 of them.

Later I discovered that there is actually an Afterwords Cafe in Washington, DC - disheartening since a lot of my novel takes place in this city. Oh well, I'm keeping it.

sorry, wrong post

"More Things Than Are Dreamt Of"

I just thought of this last night. It's was inspired by a quote from Shakespeare's Hamlet.

"There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy"
Hamlet, Avt I, Scene IV

My book is about a girl who is trying to prove the existence of fairies, Stanta Claus, the Easter Bunny and other myths like that even though no one else believes in them.

I wanted to call mine Yellow Sunshine, but I googled it to make sure there weren't any other famous books by that title. Instead, I found out that yellow sunshine is a code word for LSD. I've written about 1/4 of my novel to sound like the author was on drugs (think Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds combined with I Am the Walrus mixed with Alice in Wonderland), although I am most definitely not on drugs. I still kind of want to use Yellow Sunshine, but I'm afraid people will automatically assume things because of the LSD reference. Should I use it or find a new title?

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ryan started the fire.

Right now it's still Coventry: A Journey of Discovery, Redemption and Healing , but I'm thinking about changing it.

BTW ~ to those who are worrying if their title has been used before, you don't have to. Titles are not copywriteable. They may on occasion be trademarked (as I'm sure something like Harry Potter is), and in that case cannot be reused. But a title is NOT included in the copywrite. (Which is why there are a lot of books and movies and songs and stuff with the SAME title.) I don't think the title thing is all that confusing since the author's name is pretty prominently displayed on covers. Now names...

I had to laugh when the teachers' uniion had a "salon" for new teachers fetauring the book The Great Expectations School, which is the memoir of one guy's year teaching in the New York City Teaching Fellows program. His name? Dan Brown. But not THAT Dan Brown. I had to laugh at the few people who really thought THAT Dan Brown had been a NYCTF teacher WHILE writing all those books. Silliness!

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By J.G. Ballard for startersIndeed. The fact that Ballard used it means it must be good.

My title this year is The Spike Garden, which came to me when I was trying to come up with a name for a garden in a surreal stately mansion.
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2003 Vindicta, 2004 Clown Down, 2005 Lavender Latté, 2006 Ulysses not found, 2007 The Spike Garden

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2003 Vindicta, 2004 Clown Down, 2005 Lavender Latté, 2006 Ulysses not found, 2007 The Spike Garden

'All That You Love'.

Unashamedly (well, perhaps a little ashamedly...) taken from a Stephen King short story, from the phrase "All that you love will be carried away." My FMC murmurs it in her sleep, and it fits the theme of the novel.

I love this title far more than I should.

At first, I thought you said All You Need is Love, which is the song that I'm listening to right now! But I really like that title! (:

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ryan started the fire.

Snort! I know lots and lots of people who would buy this one based on the title alone.

Lisa:-)) (who teaches grad students)

With Anticipation

2005 “Two Truths and a Lie” literary fiction
2006 “Slipping the Tracks” literary fiction (Winner)
2006 “Exit, Pursued by Bear” literary fiction (Non Nano novel)
2007 “The Dream of Safety” literary fiction

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With Anticipation

2005 "Two Truths and a Lie" literary fiction
2006 "Slipping the Tracks" literary fiction (Winner)
2006 "Exit, Pursued by Bear" literary fiction (Non Nano novel)
2007 "The Dream of Safety" literary fiction

Mine's called "The Dream of Safety" which is ripped off from a poem by Auden. My last novel's title was ripped off from Shakespeare "Exit, Pursued by Bear". If your going to rip off a title, aim high;-) Anyway, the reason for it is that the main characters have believed to one extent or another that their lives as is keep them safe, although they are both unhappy. My main character, Nicolas, a nineteen year old boy has an affair with a friend of his father's, Lucas. He and Lucas have to decide whether to let go of each other and stay in safe, unchanged lives, which means certain unhappiness for them. Or should they choose each other rather than known safety, which would destroy many of the relationships they have in their small English village.

Lisa:-))

With Anticipation

2005 “Two Truths and a Lie” literary fiction
2006 “Slipping the Tracks” literary fiction (Winner)
2006 “Exit, Pursued by Bear” literary fiction (Non Nano novel)
2007 “The Dream of Safety” literary fiction

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With Anticipation

2005 "Two Truths and a Lie" literary fiction
2006 "Slipping the Tracks" literary fiction (Winner)
2006 "Exit, Pursued by Bear" literary fiction (Non Nano novel)
2007 "The Dream of Safety" literary fiction

I have this idea that you can't name something until you have something, ie, I haven't named my novel yet because I don't have a novel. What I do enjoy doing is naming the individual chapters as I finish them. It's kind of a celebratory gesture; I finished a chapter, so now I get to name it. It's definitely enjoyable to title your chapters, looking through it for important phrases or other title material.
I figure if I name my novel now, it'll be based on my preconceived notion of what my novel is going to be (before I've even finished a first draft of the thing). Then I might subconsciously write to that instead of the way the story or characters need to go. I figure once I finish it, I can look over it and think about it, and as the cherry-on-top of my NaNoWriMo experience I'll get to name my novel. Then it'll probably be more appropriate to the novel, because it'll actually be based on what it is as opposed to what I'd like it to be.

I'm so pleased with myself because it was really irritating me not having a working title and today I finally came up with one: The Parallels between Lost and Gone. ^____^

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“Poetry and Hums aren't things which you get, they're things which get you. And all you can do is go where they can find you.”
-- Winnie the Pooh

MOLLY!
-waves-
I love that. Seriously, it's amazing.

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ryan started the fire.

My novel, This Is Not My Life (Ceci n'est pas ma vie) is also Magritte-inspired. I wish I'd done a little more Magritte research before starting but what the hell...that's what December (or, more likely in my case, January) is for.

Contrary to what most of my readers think, very little of my fiction is autobiographical. In reaction to this tendency for people to assume that I'm writing about my life, I'm writing about my life...except that I'm heavily fictionalizing most of it to make it interesting. So it's not really my life...but it kind of is...but it kind of isn't. Get it?

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I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path...

"Flightless Birds". My MC feels like she can't escape her unsatisfying life, hence she is a flightless bird. I also use a lot of bird symbolism throughout.

The Sonata of Minerva Lai.

Well, basically, the main characters name is Minerva Lai, and to establish mood during the book, I have people playing different musical pieces - many of them are sonatas.

(P.S. Don't let the word count fool you. xP I just haven't been updating.)

I realize I'm coming rather late in the game, but hey, other people finish a NaNo in the first ten days. Why can't I finish one in the last eleven, right?

Either way, the book is called Love and Let Die.

It's about this suicidal estate salesman who meets a potential client that somehow sees something worthwhile in him, and then they get involved in trying to sort out how their lives work together and how they don't. I would put it in the Romance genre, but it seems that it isn't so much about the romance as it is about the main character, so it didn't quite seem to fit.

It's a pun off of the song name "Live and Let Die". I think I'm going to work in a few G'nR references, or at least song references, so there you go. Either that, or it's just a cheesy rip-off from the James Bond movie. Take your pick.

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"You're insane."
"Has it really taken you this long to figure that out?"
- Batman: The Long Halloween

Hm. I was thinking of two. Since my book is a collection of related short stories with the theme of change, I came up with "Autumn" because so many changes take place then, but also "Ever the Winds" which is a line from an Irish song about change. Any preferences?

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