I am a writer who often thinks of a phrase, a word, or an image, and I immediately put it on the list of, “That’s a good title for a poem, essay, song, photo collection.” I know what to call it before I write it, before I know what it is. I write poems to titles more often than not; sometimes it changes, but the title was there to start. And when I do write the poem first, it can take forever to come up with the right title. Just how I think.
(Potentially connected: My oldest girl had no name for 2 days. The second actually left the hospital and was a whole 4 days old before her name was chosen.)
I have some exciting things coming up this year, and as I wrote recently, I’ve had some particularly pernicious trouble thinking of the right title one of them. Poor nameless project, the really big one, the very personal, long-time-in-the-making project.
Well. After some accidental eavesdropping, reading other’s work, and the customarily startling flash of connected neurons, I’m pleased to say my troubles are finally over. I found it.