“Good title!” says the young William Shakespeare everywhere he goes, whenever he hears a bon mot, in Tom Stoppard’s witty movie, Shakespeare in Love. Out of ideas, short of cash, Shakespeare is adept at pilfering – mostly stealing ideas from surrounding life. His own titles are abysmal, for example, “Romeo and Ethel the Pirate’s Daughter.” We all know how that one turned out. According to Stoppard, it wasn’t Will who came up with the right title.
I felt a little like Stoppard’s young Shakespeare (but not in a good way) when I worked on my new manuscript, Gods of Water and Air. My manuscript’s current title was one of my devising, but not as a title. It was buried in the midst of a poem. I didn’t notice it until someone pointed it out as a good phrase, after convincing me that Artist House, the title I had been using, didn’t get there. It took some work to get me over that hurdle. I had been clinging to it harder than young Shakespeare to his Romeo and Ethel the Pirate’s Daughter. The title was given to me, in a similar way as the imagined Shakespeare derived his titles, by a friend who commented on my manuscript. I will be forever grateful for that title, as it formed a bridge to the new one and a way of thinking about the themes in the collection.
I once wrote an essay for Avatar Review on the art of selecting a good title. To research the subject, I thumbed through the many books on craft in my library, and found just one that had a chapter on titles, Michael Bugeja’s The Art and Craft of Poetry. Michael had this to say about label titles: “A descriptive title depicts content, a suspense one sparks interest, and the label variety is just that -- a word or two as on a can of vegetables: ‘Beans’ or ‘Creamed Corn.’”
Perhaps I should go back and reread my own essay. I need to work harder to find good titles. I will also listen more carefully to my editor when I get that question, “Best title?” When he says, “Good title!” I’ll know we’re there.