Our Blog — The Literary Type

I always struggle with titles—maybe you do, too. Enter Diane Schoemperlen, writer and Guest Editor of our upcoming Lists Issue:

Many writers have trouble with titles. I’ve often listened to them describing the extended anguish they’ve experienced when trying to come up with exactly the right title for a work of poetry and prose. Rather than pretending to share their pain, I then have to confess (sheepishly!) that I have the opposite problem: too many titles and no stories, poems, or novels to go with them. Titles pop into my mind all the time, from here, there, and everywhere. Since the late seventies, I’ve kept a list of these titles. At the moment, my list numbers 559, with more to come in short order, I’m sure. Of these, I have actually used only 49 for my own work. That leaves me with 510 orphan titles. If I live to be a hundred, I will never be able to use all these titles. I have often joked that, if things get tough, I will publish my list of titles. So here is a small selection from the larger list. Please give at least one of these sad orphans a good home at the top of a brilliant piece of your writing!

1.            An Indiscretion in Three Acts

2.            Conversations Under Glass

3.            Second Person Accusative

4.            Intimacy and the Ice-box

5.            And Then And Then And Then

6.            You Wouldn’t Know Me If You Knew Me Now

 7.            The Woman in the Yellow Dress

8.            I Hate Flamingoes

9.            Some People

10.            Damage Done

11.            The Tree Family

12.            Electrical Activity

13.            The Wives of Daniel Bolt

14.            Now You See It (Now You Don’t)

15.            Did You See That?

16.            Take A Closer Look

17.            Don’t Touch Me There

18.            Patience Is A Virgin

19.            Bar Talk

20.            The Next Day and the Next

21.            All the Rage in Paris

22.            Not On Your Life

23.            How Could You?

24.            A Sick Little Story

25.            Fighting Fire With Fire

You can read the rest (of 99!) here. Ahem (cough, cough) dibs on no. 14. (Call it you want it in the comments…) By the way, Diane’s wonderful Lists Issue is officially out of my hands and on the presses! Watch for it on the stands next month–and lots of other fun ‘listy’ stuff here on the blog in the weeks to come.