I cannot bear to write anything without a title. It may not be the title with which the work is finally sent out into the world, but it can’t live in my house without a name. Oddly enough the sermon this morning was, aptly for Easter (and also for Grace Thea’s baptism) about names. I would love to be able to precis it with wit and style, but I can’t. It was good, especially for a very mixed and very “all age” service and Rick did well. But back to names for works rather than people.
Old fogeys like me that had to work in DOS and thought the non-WYSIWYG WordStar and WordPerfect were the epitome of zippy computing will remember file names that went something like this 1864573.wp. In the early days of email (which was a huge step up from manually sending files modem to modem and put the phone out of use for hours at a time for file little longer than half a dozen pages) my email address was an easy to remember little number not unlike this… 100432.2059@compuserve.com. I remember the thrill of being informed by compuserve that as an original and long standing customer I was to be given preference in taking up the name gillian.smellie@compuserve.com. Strangely I don’t think I would have had much competition.
But names matter, and I can’t write unless the job in hand has a proper one. Not a working title that means nothing, even in my banking days I thought it showed a total lack of commitment to the new post merger company to call it NewCo – which is what 90% of them were called. No my WIP need real names that, even if they are not the ones they are ultimately wearing when I send them out, they could have worn, if I hadn’t found them a better one.
So, taking a leaf out of the book of the talented Jackie Buxton (jackiebuxton.blogspot.co.uk) I am asking you for help. Current WIP started out as A Slip of the Mind , it currently answers to The Dorothy Summer. As it features both dementia and a key character called Dorothy whose arrival in the summer of 1976 changed the lives of the rest of the characters both are apt. But which is the better. I rather like the latter but wonder if the title is over used (The Greengage Summer, The Dragonfly Summer). What do you think? You can read the unedited first few thousand words via the link above if you feel the urge, or not, as the case may be.
