Okay, so it’s not all bad.  Occasionally I know the title of a story before I begin it, and may even ‘hear’ the title in my head and jump from it to the story.  But . . .

The other hundredth-millionth percent of the time (can you tell I struggle in math?) the title is the last thing I do to my story, and another reason to groan when it goes out.  Take my Keela story, for instance.  I can’t call it ‘Keela’ and have any self-respect.  Especially when I intend to write more stories with the same character.  What would I call them?  ‘Keela Again’ or ‘Keela, the Sequel’? 

So I did a brainstorm, my usual approach to any writing problem.  I came up with lots of drivel like: The Call of the Sea, Sea-song and Village Terror, The Mermaid in Waiting, etc.

Those are terrible!  My four-year old’s suggestion, ‘One Day She Ate a Noodle’ has more flair!

So how do writers choose good titles?  Neil Gaiman has some good ones, like a personal favorite, “Pages From a Journal Found in a Shoebox Left in a Greyhound Bus Somewhere Between Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Louisville, Kentucky.”  How did he come up with that?  Maybe he auctions titles off on his blog, but he didn’t always have his blog.

Hemingway reportedly burrowed into neglected literature and old quotes for his titles, but if everyone did that it would soon become quite obvious. 

The good news is, I’ll figure this out eventually.  Plenty of brainstorming, midnight mad-scribbles, and haunting of the writer’s forums should do the trick.  Of course, the bad news is that by then I’ll have just completed my first novel, given it a brilliant title, and sent it off to the publishers.  Whereupon they will take one look at the title and throw it out.