Maybe someone will find this interesting. I always start a story with a working title. There is always something that triggers a title idea and it usually informs something early in the story.

Then?

It gets changed at least once during the writing. Don’t ask me why but I can always count on it. The closest I’ve come to keeping a working title was North Country Girl, which was born as Girl of the North Country. Not sure why I decided to shuffle that around. It may have been easier to fit on a cover. (Not kidding).

Everything is Broken started out as Heaven Ain’t Bad. It changed after I wrote a beach scene mid book, where a small boy complains to his mother how he cannot find a seashell that isn’t broken. Somehow, I noticed a theme that ran through the book, and I changed the title. There also is a scene with Sample in the hospital that is a nod to the original Heaven Ain’t Bad title. I had been listening to a lot of Townes Van Zandt at the time. My favorite song by him is “You Are Not Need Now” and the line “Heaven ain’t bad but you don’t get nothing done” has always resonated with me. Sample must have liked that line, too.

Persy’s Song began life as God’s Golden Shores. I was always a little concerned that the title would come off as a religious fiction title. I still love the title but I write crime fiction filled with drug dealers, hookers, strippers, mobsters. You get the point. When a character showed up in the story with lines from Bob Dylan’s “Percy’s Song” tattooed on her forearm. I realized her name was Persephone Song, and a title was born.

As I mentioned in my last post, the day after finishing Persy, I started a new story. It is another Fuzzy Koella case. It’s working title is The Smallwood Harp. Only ten thousand words in and I’m already entertaining at least two replacement titles. So, stay tuned.

–TD

Finally.

Finally.

I am done. I finished Persy’s Song this morning. For a long time, I was ashamed of how long this was taking. I was disappointed with myself for not “finishing what I started.” I don’t think I realized some of the baggage I carried around due to life events that have bombarded me during my short writing career. One in particular, that occurred just as I released my first novel, and was in the process of writing the climax of my second. I haven’t want to think or talk much about it because it just sounded like excuse making. And I was ashamed.

Today, I am proud.

I’ve learned a lot about myself in this process, and I suppose that is really the great thing about any creative endeavor. Maybe, if your lucky, the creation is happening to yourself and not just your piece.

Tomorrow, I’ll start a new story. Sometime in the next week I’ll turn on spellcheck and get the typos corrected. So I can get this to Jill for the first read of Persy’s Song.

The sculpture displayed here is The Rape of Persephone by Bernini. One of the inspirations for the story. If you’re interested in the other, you can do a You Tube search for Bob Dylan’s “Percy’s Song.” (with a ‘C’ not an ‘S’).

Talk to you soon.

Tony

Photo: Gian Lorenzo Bernini, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons