Good Morning.
I think I'm almost finished with the book I've been writing since a few months after my husband's passing. The book is about my seven years with him with a lot of flashbacks to my earlier time with him and I've rewritten it again and again and again. I tackled it first in strictly autobiographical form but I was worried that I'd get sued because there are bad guys in the book in addition to the prince. A seasoned author isn't concerned about legal risks but I'm not a seasoned author. I am, at age 73, a fledgling author, but hey, Grandma Moses started painting at the age of 78 so I'm way ahead of the game. In any case, a lawyer friend told me to write the book as a roman a clef - a novel with characters based on real people - and that's what I've done. It's better than an autobiography any day of the week because I can embellish a few things and delete stuff I don't want to talk about.
The most difficult tasks about writing a book are the first paragraph, the last paragraph, and the selection of a title. My research tells me a publisher reads the first few pages of a manuscript at best and probably shakes his or her head in either disgust or boredom. That's after an agent agrees to take the book to begin with because publishers don't read submissions that are sent directly to them. They don't have time.
I am finally okay with the beginning and the ending, but coming up with a title has been very difficult and I'm still not there. Let's consider the titles of well-known novels written by authors who never worried if they'd get sued. There are straightforward ones about the main character like Anna Karenina by Tolstoy and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Others tell you a bit more about the contents such as The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway who also wrote A Farewell to Arms about a war and the effects of it. It sounds romantic and teary and the ending certainly is that, but you have no idea what the book is about until you get into it. The Call of the Wild by Jack London could be about any creature drawn to its feral heritage and The Sun Also Rises, about a bunch of ex-pats roaming around Europe in search of absolutely nothing, could be about almost any subject on earth but they are great titles anyway.
Other novels have titles that refer to something. Lord of the Flies by William Golding probably comes from the Hebrew name for Satan - Beelzebub - that translates to lord of flies. Golding was haunted by the way people kill each other so easily, especially during war, but in today's world, the title seems particularly meaningful. The title of Harper Lee's masterpiece, To Kill a Mockingbird, refers to a conversation Atticus has with Jem and Scout. Killing a mockingbird is a bad thing to do, he tells his children, because mockingbirds are good birds. Atticus, an attorney, is defending Tom Robinson, a black man charged with raping a white girl, and knows that his client is innocent but has no chance of a fair trial in the south. It is a fabulous title.
I have been through dozens of possibilities for my book. I've looked up Biblical and Shakespearean quotes with no success whatever. I've plowed through a hundred poems, hoping to find the perfect phrase. At the end of the day or probably in the middle of the night, I will come up with something. Unfortunately Gone With the Wind, Tender is The Night, and An American Tragedy have all been taken.
Best regards,
Elisabeth
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