writing

Titles

/ Lisa / 13 Comments

What makes you pick up a new book? Usually it’s the title that catches my eye first.

Here are some titles that have resulted in the discovery of a great story: The Crossing Places (Elly Griffiths), Though Not Dead (Dana
Stabenow), Crocodile on the Sandbank (Elizabeth Peters), She Walks These Hills (Sharon McCrumb), and many, many more. I’m sure when  I blow out the kerosene lantern I’m going to remember several I should have listed. And it would be interesting to see what titles you like.

But this is more about the difficulty in catching just the right title for your own work. What an impossible thing. I’ve recently sent a story off for editing, with no title. Here are a couple failed ideas.

There’s a line in the story about a small house up against a canyon wall, with rocks scattered on its roof ‘like some weird mountain rain’. I love that line and thought ‘Mountain Rain’, great title! Until I realized that this is part of the ‘Mountain Mystery series’, which is just way too many mountains. The title and subtitle could almost form a mountain range on their own.

Then I thought about the name of some liquid libation that shows up in the story: Silver Mist. Because the liquid is distilled in a silver mining area. But honestly that title did nothing for me.

So I’m still wandering around waiting for inspiration. The right title will show up eventually. In the meantime, I’m pondering what makes a good title. Why one works and another doesn’t.

In some ways it’s obvious. A book called Encrypted won’t be picked up by me. Neither will Lady Sophia’s Rescue (but my sister will snap that one up). So the title clues me in that the book is a genre I like to read. Like I said, obvious.

Yet there are a lot of mystery titles I don’t pick up. So just as obviously, the title is simply luck of the draw. There’s something in the words that I as a reader respond to. The mystery reader standing next to me might pass up the same book I just felt an urge to read.

If it’s all so arbitrary  then why is it so hard to come up with a title? Seems like it should be the easiest part. Or at least a little easier than writing the whole story to begin with.

I wonder if anyone has ever titled their book, ‘Pick me! Pick me!’

Some more titles

Some more titles

Present Tense aka Book Review

/ Lisa / 4 Comments

Have you ever come across one of those books you can’t escape? I did with The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths. The first time I saw it was at a thrift store. The title caught my eye, the cover of a stormy gray beach did, too. It looked like a book I’d really like. Until I picked it up and glanced inside. It was written in present tense. You know…’I sit down’ instead of ‘I sat down’.

I don’t like present tense as it seems to keep me from immersing myself in the story.

Some time later I saw the book at the library. I thought ‘great title’, picked it up, and then thought, ‘oh, it’s this one again’. That happened several times. Finally I got the message that maybe I should give it a try. Within the first three pages I read this:

‘The wind is whispering through the reeds, and here and there they see glimpses of still, sullen water reflecting the grey sky. At the edge of the marshland Ruth stops, looking for the first sunken post, the twisting shingle path that leads through the treacherous water and out to the mudflats.

At the henge circle, the tide is out and the sand glitters in the early morning light. Ruth kneels on the ground as she saw Erik doing all those years ago. Gently she stirs the quivering mud with her trowel.

Suddenly everything is quiet; even the seabirds stop their mad skirling and calling up above. Or maybe they are still there and she just doesn’t hear them. In the background she can hear Nelson breathing hard but Ruth herself feels strangely calm. Even when she sees it, the tiny arm still wearing the christening bracelet, even then she feels nothing.

She had known what she was going to find.’

I read the book, and the next one, and the one after that. It took only a few pages for me to no longer notice the tense it was written in. There are a few reasons for this.

One, the author does an excellent job of making the setting a character in the book. The crossing place is that area between sea and land, and in Griffith’s hands the area becomes as vital to the story as the people. I felt the haunting magic and the ancient mysteries and loved how the story was strong because of where it took place.

Two, the characters were so real. With their flaws and humor and fears and loves. I wanted to spend time with them, which is why I bought the sequel. I cared about what happened to them all, even the ones I didn’t like.

Three, Griffiths wrote present tense in such a subtle way that I quit thinking about it. As I read I no longer felt it cumbersome and quit looking for mistakes. Present tense is very difficult to write because it’s not the way we speak and I don’t think it comes naturally to a writer. It would be interesting to ask Griffiths why she chose to write that way. Whatever the reason, she handles it with a deft, gentle pen so it is no longer a tool or affectation, but simply how that story had to be told.

Don’t get me wrong; I still don’t like present tense and would never consider writing that way. But Elly Griffiths has figured out how to make it work and I hope she keeps it up.

I also wish I’d bought the book in the thrift store when I first saw it. If I’d listened to my instincts I would have saved some money…

Diaries and Dramas

/ Lisa / 4 Comments

A few weeks after my mother died, my sister and I went through her things.  This involved scaling a gigantic mountain as my mother was a hoarder.  At one point I heard my sister sobbing and found her holding my mother’s diary.  It was an odd journal, full of stories of things that hadn’t happened, cruel comments about her children that made no sense, and serious signs of instability.  But all my sister saw were the horrible words written about her.  At the time we had a bonfire outside and so I took the diary, plus more of my mother’s that I found, and threw them onto the fire with broken-hearted fury.  And then I went home, gathered the diaries that I had kept since I was nine years old, and burned them, too.  There was a rage inside that words could so hurt.  I didn’t ever, ever, want something I had written to hurt another person so deeply. 

It probably wasn’t smart to make such an important decision that impacted not just me but siblings as well, when none of us were emotionally stable.  And over the past few years I have had brief moments of regret. 

And over the past few years I have never again kept a diary. 

Here’s the thing though.  Most writers keep some sort of notebook.  Something that holds bits of over-heard dialog, descriptions of someone passed in a street, ideas for stories, and random thoughts on writing.  I keep having this little nagging voice whispering to me that I should be writing life down.  Added to that, I know there are many types of diaries.  I know people who keep weather journals, nature journals, bird journals, and even one who keeps a running tab on river levels.  So if I really wanted to keep a diary, there are a lot of forms I could choose. 

Yet I keep going back to that moment when my mother’s words devastated my sister.  And I believe that if I started a diary again, the words would be false because I would mentally be editing them out of fear of hurting someone.  And that kind of writing is dangerous because there’s the possibility of the writing becoming a lie.  I find myself in this quandary of wanting to keep a journal and yet not knowing how to make it both honest and painless.  This is a common tightrope for writers to walk.  The work needs to be honest.  A friend described this beautifully when she said she was using a pen name to remove the inner critic that sat on her shoulder whispering, ‘what would your mother think?’.  But a pen name and the anonymity that brings isn’t an option when it comes to a journal.

Fiction is easier.  I have written stories where family members have been represented in characters, and not always favorably.  Do I worry about offending a family member?  Heck no.  I can always say, ‘it’s fiction’.  That excuse doesn’t exist for journals. 

I went into an office supply store this weekend and stood before the variety of notebooks thinking how much I would like to take on those blank pages.  I haven’t felt that desire to journal in a long time.  But as I reached for one, the fear came back.  I believe journals are important, especially for writers, but I haven’t found a solution to writing honestly without possibly breaking my son’s heart some day.  Even though I’m not my mother, and even though I want to record my writing life, not his life, is it worth the risk?  Some day I’ll find the balanced answer, but obviously it’s not today.