I have the problem of a number of noxious weeds growing in my meadow. I especially hate the thistle, even with its gorgeous red blooms. One of the weeds the county will cite you for having is called toadflax. Sounds like an appropriate name for something horrible…the problem is that the plant is gorgeous and I wish my field were covered with it. Locals call it Butter and Eggs plant, which I think fits a lot better. Apparently, it’s bad for livestock to eat. Of course there are no livestock on my property or anyone else’s that can eat it, but that’s a typical government nonsense detail. (By the way, the biggest reservoir of these noxious weeds is on government lands and is never dealt with at all.) So my totally inappropriately named Toadflax fights a battle for survival that it must lose eventually. I have another plant called Mullein that I think is ugly and needs an even uglier name. I worked hard to remove it for a while, only to find that apparently it is a protected species here because Indians used it ceremonially. Again, no Indians will be harvesting my Mullein. This same plant was considered a noxious weed in California and we deliberately destroyed it in the parks I worked in.
But then instead of names that are inappropriate, contrast it with some things that seem to have very apropos names. Such as, Bubble and Squeak because it is a food dish that bubbles and squeaks when it's being cooked. Or Queen Anne's Lace, which is a plant that looks like lace (and I’ve had the good fortune to have it grow where I’ve lived!) Why do I bring these appropriate and inappropriate names up? When Wendy and I work on naming our books, usually by the time we are done, a title just seeps out and seems right. It does that because the narrative has worked on our subconscious as we wrote it until we knew we had to name it the way we did. It fit the story and felt like a title that was meant for that genre of writing. I think it’s important to carefully consider the title of your book. It needs to catch the reader’s attention, but it also needs to convey something of a feeling regarding what the story is about. It needs to fit. Otherwise, you run the risk of disappointing the reader and possibly losing them because they figure they were tricked. Sometimes, good titling is apparently hard to do, for I’ve seen several books lately that have really poor title selections for what they are about, and I feel like the author didn’t take the time to be as creative with the title as they did with the book. It’s all an important part of the process.
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Greg
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