Titles
... a rose by any other name would smell as sweet ...
Well, I'm over halfway through the first draft of the second book in the Zach and Zoe series, and I'm quite pleased with the way the story is unfolding. It's not actually presenting itself in strict accordance with the outline, but that happens -- in fact, it's a good thing when that happens, because it means I'm allowing the story to move forward naturally instead of pushing it.
I still don't have a title for it though. The working title is Zach & Zoe and Howie the Horrible, but I only settled on that as a temporary handle. I knew from the start that it would never be the final title of the book. So this morning, while I was lying in bed, draining the last dregs of sleep from the night, the cogs of my mind unconsciously meshed into gear and I started thinking title. Except nothing came. At least nothing came for Zach & Zoe.
I did, however, come up with a wonderful title for a book I haven't yet written. It is The Sentinel of Mabry Moor, and it will be about the lookout in a graveyard. Not a live lookout, mind you, but one of the residents. Don't ask for details, because at the moment they're all a jumble in my head -- 1791, England, a teen who dies an unnatural death, grave robbers, mortal enemies ... Oh, this one's going to be fun! I can hardly wait to get at it.
But back to titles. It's funny how that works -- or doesn't. Sometimes the titles come easy, and sometimes they're a real struggle. I must have changed the title of The Gramma War at least five times before I found one that worked, whereas Cairo Kelly and the Mann popped into my head the second I decided to write that story. I chose The Runaways easily too, though the publishers wanted to change it, because there were already about forty books out there with the same title. But since they couldn't come up with anything better, they let it stand. One title I would have changed but it was too late to do so, was Zee's Way. There's nothing wrong with the title; it's just that at some point I realized that Zee's Wall would have been more reflective of the theme and plot of the story.
The biggest challenge -- and the most fun -- is having a title before I have a story. That's happened to me a couple of times. Waltzing Annie Home was a short story I wrote, based solely on being in love with the title. It was a runner-up in the 1999 Great Canadian Short Story competition. The other was The Hemingway Tradition, my first Soundings book for Orca Book Publishers. I am very proud of both those stories, so maybe there's something to be said for finding the right title. If you can find a killer title, the story will follow.
Which brings me back to Zach & Zoe 2. What shall I call it? I still have a while to come up with a title, and if I don't, the editor will, or the marketing department will, or the mail boy will, or ... maybe you! Suggestions welcome.