Thursday, October 06, 2011

Thursday Thoughts

With Nanowrimo creeping up on us, I should be scrambling to finish as much as possible to clear the decks - but life has me scrambling too much to spend as much time with writing as I would like. Case in point: the story I've started has hardly begun - though I like what's developing so far, as I discover more about the character and her circumstances - and as far as the editing pass on Scylla and Charybdis, I'm still ...

No, actually, I'm off the space station. Barely!

Does anyone else have a horrible time with titles? I'm afraid to brace Nano without a working title ... wait, who am I kidding? There's no such thing as a working title for me. It's just "the horrible preliminary title that will stick because I can't think of anything better." The few times I've had to retitle a story for one reason or another turned into an uphill battle. Here's the worst:

Firstborn / The Dreamweaver's Dispute: Had to change the title because the magazine had printed a story with the same title in the previous issue ... by Orson Scott Card, no less. I did a brainstorm where I wrote down every word I could think of that might relate to the story - character type, name, nouns, verbs, etc. I spent hours kicking around ideas with another person ... and this is still the best I ended up with.

2 comments:

Aubrie said...

Thanks for visiting my blog and checking out my cover, Lindsey! The orb is part of the plotline of the book, so I'm so glad they put it in there!

As for titles, I make up a list of ten different ones, no matter how silly, and then I pick from that. Usually there's one or two good ones on the list.

Good luck!

BTW, you're in the acknowledgments for Tundra 37 as well!

Lindsey Duncan said...

I do seem to recall that ... doubly cool.

Hee, I'd need forty or fifty to get one good one, and my brain ain't that good. ;-)

My fantasy mystery novel still has no title. *Panicking.* My latest thought is I may do a play off the title of a Sherlock Holmes novel or a Poe detective story. But those are big shoes to approach.