Title Talk

MOOD STATUS: "Disappointed". Just realized my jury duty is for the entire week.

I have a confession to make. I never give too much thought to the titles of my manuscripts.

Whew. There. I feel so much better now.

I know I should. After all, publishing is a business and you want your title to stand out, but I like to focus on the writing of the story so much more. So I simply pick a phrase that pretty much tells me what the book is about and then I always figure I'll change it later.

Of course, that never happens. LOL!

However, I did notice after cleaning out my files this weekend that I did go through quite a number of titles for my recent Avalon romance Georgie on His Mind.
(Which, by the way, is a title I do NOT care for at all)

There. I admitted that, too. (Confession is good for the soul.)

Anyhew, here's the list of original titles I had for it:

Dream Man this didn't work for me because I felt it sounded paranormalish (is that a word?)

Brotherly Love Although this title does go with the storyline, it just sounds wrong for a romance, if you know what I mean.

Dream Date although my heroine does enter a date contest it's not the main focus of the story so I felt it didn't go.

My Best Friend's Sister actually, I still like this, but maybe it's a little too obvious.

I finally kept Georgie on His Mind because my hero can't get "Georgie" (short for Georgianna) off his mind, hence the title. I pretty much went with that because I was sick of thinking of titles.

To be honest, I thought I would be told to change the title. But for now, I guess it's staying. We'll see. Publishers usually know best.


In fact, according to Marvin D. Cloud's article: here's a list of books that started out with different titles:


• Tomorrow is Another Day became Gone With The Wind.


• Blossom and the Flower became Peyton Place.


• The Rainbow Book became Free Stuff For Kids.


• The Squash Book became the Zucchini Book.


• John Thomas and Lady Jane became Lady Chatterly’s Lover.


• Trimalchio in West Egg became Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.


• Something that Happened became Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.


• Catch 18 became Catch 22





Interesting, huh?



Anyway, five different titles for one manuscript is a record for me.


How about you?


What's the most number of titles you've had for one manuscript?