The Incredibly Difficult Task of Naming a Book, Plus How to Deal with Rejection

I'm trying to come up with a title for my young adult novel. I wrote it a few years ago and had a bunch of cool people beta read it. Mostly the feedback was positive, but I had one friend really slam the protagonist.

Get this: he called her a b----! Can you believe that? I mean, really! Come on! A b----! Thanks JOE!

Oh yeah, his name was Joe. He was pretty cool even though he slammed my firstborn. I mean, that's basically what it was. Ha ha. His girlfriend/wife (I don't know what to call her except "seriously cool chick"!) also read my book and she was awesome. I think she also thought my protagonist was a bleep. Seriously.

So because they felt this way, I obviously had to rewrite the entire damn thing. What happened is, I believe I queried five agents and when I didn't hear back I considered myself a failure. That's how I am: hyper-sensitive. It's very hard to write query letters, if you don't know, and it really blows to sit down and compose five individual letters tailored to specific agents and to not hear from them.

And why are they individually tailored? Why do that? I mean, doesn't it take forever? Yeah, it does. But if you've looked into it at all, you've heard the scathing things agents have to say about writers who send out generic form letters. They WANT you to speak directly to them and if you don't, you're in the doghouse.

Which is why when you don't hear back, it's considered rejection and you feel that all your time was wasted. And then you think, "I know, I'll enter Writer's of the Future, win, and then get published because I'm so awesome." So then you focus on writing a million short stories and proceed to forget that you should be marketing your finished novel.

And then you don't win Writer's of the Future because the contest is crap, but in the meantime, you've become a million times better as a writer and you look back at your first completed novel and you think, man, this is awesome. I mean, some of it, and I can't just let this brilliant concept go to waste. 

So then you decide to just, you know, fix it up. A little. Fixing it up a little turns into an entire rewrite. You've changed the characters, your protagonist is suddenly way more immature yet empathetic, and you've shortened the plot drastically. Basically the only thing that stays the same is the skeleton. Well, one leg of the skeleton. The rest is totally new.

This is why you don't rewrite. Unless you're like me, and you're effing CONVINCED this is the most brilliant concept to have landed in a writer's brain since J.K. and Stephenie got coffee and outlined their books together while planning to take over the publishing industry for twenty years.

Ok, I'm not THAT convinced. Or that cocky. But I loved it and couldn't just let it die as a first novel. I needed to revive it.

And the first installment is done (now I need to rewrite the second book, which I finished a while ago). I just need a decent title. One that exudes awesomeness. All I can think of is "Hunger Games." Or "Twilight." Or "The Sorcerer's Stone and the Hungry New Moons."  "The Chamber of Secret Edwards and Bellas." None of those sound very good. They're missing something. Like sense.

I will keep plugging away at it. And then, I don't know, I will design the most frickin' cool cover ever to grace the pages of the Amazon Kindle store. Ha!

My carpal tunnel is acting up. I have to stop typing! Argh! Curse you, CTS!!!!!

New Blog

So I started a new blog, if you'll notice. It's in my profile, and it's called Copy Editor-at-Large. I think. Yeah, that's what I named it.

Maybe some of you, my treasured readers, did not know or realize that my day-job is copyediting (by night I'm a superhero). I don't blame you for not knowing, seeing as how my blog is probably littered with typos and misused words. I'm only human, and I don't hire a copy editor to read through my posts before I put them up. I'm sure they could use a little extra help, but I have neither the time nor the money to do that.

But you should do it. If, unlike me, you have a million readers, you really ought to be paying someone (like me) to go over your posts before you embarrass yourself and publish a post with typos. You know? There are too many people posting willy nilly all over the web and spreading their word-abuses around like alcohol-filled baby bottles at the daycare—for a moment the wit is intoxicating, but in the long-run, the language neglect is only creating a monster. Am I making any sense? Hmmm. If not, don't let that stop you from paying me to go over your posts before you put them up. My rates are reasonable. And I will also go over your manuscript for you. Because I know you have one. You do. Don't be bashful.

I'll be honest. I'm only doing this so I can quit my job. At first I imagined becoming a published author would set me free, but that's taking longer than I hoped. So I'll just do what I do best—read the work of others and help them see their mistakes. I'm good at pointing out mistakes.

So go over to my new blog and subscribe. I promise to not only give you insightful advice and hilarious stories about the abuses applied to the English language, but also clever anecdotes about my attempts to wrangle English into doing my will.

I may also tell you about my wranglings with the editors I work with (with whom I work...see! Just because I break the rules sometimes, doesn't mean I don't see what I've done. I do it on purpose! I'm a rule breaker . . . but I'll slap your wrists if you break the rules . . . ;) ). Because that's interesting crap. No?

Walking Away

Why am I still writing?

I continue to work on a book I finished almost two years ago. In fact, I can't remember precisely when I finished it, but I know it's been a while. Don't read this and think, "Oh no, another stupid blogger who is also trying to become an author...yippee," click, delete subscription/bookmark/address, burn computer monitor sullied by idiotic writing.

Because seriously, even if I never become anything in terms of publishing credentials or the like, my blog is all right, isn't it? 

And anyway, it's not like I'm writing a book of sketches. No way. That would be awful. No one wants to read an entire book of that.

Wait, did I just inadvertently condemn my blog?

The point is, I continue to revise this book. I can't let it go. I like the ideas in it and some of the characters too much to bid it farewell. I might have a problem. Do I? Is intervention necessary?

I could start on another book and I have the ideas to do that much. However, this other book, well, I guess I like staring real hard at it all day long, trying to turn it into something more perfect. It's not easy either, because as you can see from my writing here, I'm no James Morrison. 

That's a joke. Jim Morrison. Haha. Excuse me if you think Jim Morrison was one of poetry's greatest accomplishments. The name has just been scrolling around in my head recently because of some insult someone else wrote about his writing. It wasn't me either. I think it was an agent saying that it's not a compliment to compare your writing to Morrison's. 

I think Stoker is worried about my absurd dedication to rewriting this book. I can tell. He's given me a couple concerned looks while trying to be casual and asking multi-layered questions such as, "So, do you think it's getting better the more you edit it?" And his voice rises an octave at the end of the sentence, suggesting he thinks it's not getting better. 

He's a good diplomat.

But yes, his concern makes sense. He's an engineer in Nashville. He mixes music, which is like editing a book. When a band does an album, they record it a certain way. Then an engineer (or someone not as qualified these days, like a plumber by day and a street-busker by night) adjusts things after the fact. Cuts out drums, replaces certain sounds (oh the wonders of digital editing), lowers the vocals, and all that. 

It's a different head-space from creation. So Stoker knows that at some point, you stop hearing things right and you have to just stop. Your brain gets too deep in the mix. Things begin to sound muddied. Noises don't strike your eardrum right anymore. It's the trees, you're lost in them. You need to get out and see the forest. 

For me the words are the trees and the story is the forest. Too much editing can crush the life out of a story. And at times I don't know when to just walk away. 

When I first rewrote the beginning of this story, a few months ago, I guess, I was extremely excited. I thought it rocked. I was full of self-congratulation and lauded myself the next Homer of epic stories. But now I feel like Chris Farley in Tommy Boy when he has crushed the rolls to death in the diner where they encounter Sea Bass. If I don't just walk away from this chapter, like RIGHT NOW, it will die. And I will hate it. It will resemble a dusty pile of yeast and flour (is that possible? I wanted to relay that it would resemble its most basic elements, but was the yeast a stretch?).

So I'm walking away, you hear? Story? I'm talking to you, Story. Don't think you can lull me into changing one more word in Chapter 1. I'm through. We're through. I'm going to continue coddling chapters 2 through 5 until they sing like sirens. 

I know you thought that by the time we arrived here in this post, I would be saying that I'm walking away from the book entirely. Ha! Psyche. No way. It's too good to give up on entirely. I'm a stayer. Even if it's to my detriment in the long run. 

Further, I had a conversation with the Universe earlier wherein I told the Vast Silence that I'm just going to keep plugging away. I can wait an eternity to get anywhere. I've done it before and so help me, I'll do it again. 

Reverse psychology sometimes work on the Universe/Vast Silence. It's a gamble, but really, what's NOT a gamble?  

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