I've spent part of the morning assembling my working woman chapbook (some time ago, you may remember that I wrote about noticing how many of my recent poems discuss mid-life despair at working life and wondering if a book of those poems could work or whether it would be too depressing; unfortunately, I can't find the original blog post).
Now for the hard part: choosing a title. I don't have the same kind of trouble choosing titles that some people have written about. Some people can't find a title because no title seems applicable to the book as a whole.
On the contrary, I usually have at least 5 titles with which I am swoonily in love. I suppose it's a good problem to have.
So, I'm turning to you, faithful readers (both here and on Facebook). Which title would most appeal to you? I'm going to leave aside the issue of which title is most applicable to the collection, since they all are (perhaps I'll save that for a future blog post, if there's enough information). All of these potential titles are also titles of individual poems in the collection.
What I really want to know is which title would most compel you to pick up the book?
Here are your title options, in no particular order (you may also say, "None of them are appealing; try again":
1. Scout at Midlife
2. Sleepless Beauties
3. I Stand Here Shredding Documents
4. Meeting Hell
5. Penelope Plans a Play Date
Let me know what you think; if you want to expound on why/how you chose the one you did and/or rejected the others, feel free. And thanks for playing/voting.
Best Essay Collections of 2017 by Women Authors
6 years ago
5 comments:
Kristin,
I would pick up I Stand Here Shredding Documents for the Tillie Olsen reference and Penelope Plans a Play Date for the alliteration.
How exciting to be putting together a new collection!
Good luck!
Oh titles are hard aren't they?!
My fav: Sleepless Beauties
**love this, word play and visual and right to the point!
Then
5. Penelope Plans a Play Date
My third would be "Shredding Documents"
***I might drop the first person thing or have it be "Shredding Documents in my Heels" or something to allude to working life... and so people didn't think it was a Watergate scandal again. ;-)
These weren't my favorites but wanted to say why--
1. Scout at Midlife
***This made me think of To Kill a Mockingbird (which is the point), but I guess I was afraid the reader would think the whole chapbook is about Scout (and if it is then this works!) If it wasn't the name "Scout" (unless that is the persona in the poems), I'd like this.
4. Meeting Hell
***This was my least favorite. I think because it gave me no idea what I was going to read. This would would depending on me buying it by the cover image completely.
Hope this helps! I do the same thing with titles, they are hard for me!
I vote for "I stand here...."
because mid-life writing has a degree of difficulty - as the aforementioned Tillie tells us.
Looking forward to reading the book!
Kate K.
I really like all of them, but I think Sleepless Beauties caught me. Miss you.
Chum
Thanks everyone for voting!
Post a Comment