You are currently browsing the daily archive for February 26, 2007.
I still haven’t come up with a title for my book. For me, this is either completely simple–it pops into my head right away and it’s perfect for the book and everyone loves it. Examples: Passing Through Paradise. The Charm School. Other times, I go for months without knowing what the book will ultimately be called. The whole time I was writing The You I Never Knew, it was known as Daddy Take My Kidney, Lover Take My Heart.
Every once in awhile, we think we’re all agreed and I go public with a title and at the last minute, it gets shot down–either by someone at my publisher or by a buyer for a big chain of bookstores. There’s usually a good reason–maybe there’s already a book with this title, or it rubs the buyer the wrong way….This was a problem back when Talking to the Moon became Significant Others and ultimately, Table for Five. The decision was made after there was a “Dear Reader” letter published in the back of one of my books, saying “Please watch for Significant Others next year. I still get letters asking me whatever happened to Significant Others.
Back to the present troubles. It’s a February book. The Catskills, a frozen lake, a lake-effect blizzard. Oh! I’ve got it! Lake Effect. Too perfect. But I’m told this is too cold and clinical for my warm and fuzzy books. We move on to Heart of Winter which I quite like, except it’s already been taken.
Then I thought about the word Midwinter. Wrote it down. Circled around it. Imagined it on the one of my covers. It’s a good word for a February 2008 book, eh? So I went to Google and typed in “midwinter” to see if it would trigger any riffs or phrases beyond “In the bleak midwinter” which is a great phrase but it’s already been used.
Messing around on Google is a dicey thing to do if you’re punch drunk from writing 3500 words and have never been that great at attention and focus. Because the next thing I knew, I was reading (with inappropriately deep absorption) about something called “Midwinter Pottery.” And suddenly I’m helplessly in love. I mean, look at this stuff. 
Could it be any cooler? Those who know me know I am a midcentury modern kind of girl. My house was built in 1961. Some of the neighbors even call it the “Jetson House.” So anything from that era…
Anyway. I don’t have a title but I have a new obsession. I am in such trouble.
