It’s All In The Title

The Sexual Adventures of a Middle-aged Backpacker

Once upon a time at University as a post-fieldwork PhD student, I declared that I would write a novel entitled, The Sexual Adventures of a Middle-aged Backpacker. A tenured academic, the idea of who in open-fly striped pyjamas amused me no end, retorted, ‘Nobody would ever read a title like that’.

That I never wrote the backpacker book is an indication of how quickly a girl can lose heart. The academic’s dismissal of my special-entry, middle-aged student idea touched a childhood button equivalent to my father cutting me in two with the words, ‘What would you know, you’re only a little girl’.

As an aside, another university doozie was my PhD supervisor saying, ‘You’ll have to learn to write like a man.’ That one too strangulated me for years. Yet, by the grace of my age-mate who left us last week, Helen Reddy, here I am. And I am, after all, Woman.

Medicating Distress

Another title I once promised friends was, The Grizzle and Giggle Club. It was to be a funny account of the way women console each other to cope with overburdened or miserable lives by grizzling and giggling (in mutual recognition), sans pills. Men seem never to understand the importance of this form of release; they try to fix things when we grizzle to them. No doubt they feel helpless when we say, ‘thanks but no thanks’.

When the father of my children left me, my doctor prescribed Serapax. I’ll call him Dr Fixit. I took one little blue pill that day and lay, semi-conscious on my lonely double bed for the entire afternoon with three small children aged two, four and five crying and trying to rouse their comatose mother.

From that day forth, I have denounced the medical tendency to medicate distress. The practice of prescribing away women’s misery is, in my view, an act of social control; keep them in their place. Thank goodness we can write!

Pompous vs Saleable Titles

As my mother once rightly pointed out, I’ve become a tad pompous over the last 30 years. Instead of thinking up engaging titles with a promise of fun as I once did, I have written one book called (obscurely) On Gidgee Plains. My second, now two-thirds complete is entitled (sociologically) High Rise Society. And, Beyond Ginza (a child synaesthete’s take on the British Occupation of Japan) is in the planning stage. Nothing light or amusing anywhere.

By way of showcasing each of these titles, I offer a snippet of writing from each, with suggested alternative titles. I ask you to decide which works best for you.

Title Showcase: Novels

Beyond Ginza which used to be BCOF Baby Blues

The vignette of possible opening lines below emerged in a workshop with Jude Aquilina where Jude denounced the original pompous title of BCOF Baby Blues. While the story is fictional, the idea comes from our time in Japan when my father refurbished and managed the Marunouchi Hotel in Tokyo for the British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF) at the end of WWII. The photos are from my personal collection.

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High Rise Society or Old Man Eucalypt and Kewpie Dolls

While the title, High Rise Society is sociologically descriptive, it fails to hint at the magical realism in this book. Triggered by the unexpected death of a kind soul called Misha whose body is not discovered for weeks, the story explores loneliness and isolation. When Misha dies, the protagonist is befriended by a wise tree and two drag-queens in what become transforming moments for her. Drag costumes remind her of the Kewpie dolls of childhood, and the tree has echoes of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie. (I am still playing with this one.)

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On Gidgee Plains or The Publican’s Daughter

On Gidgee Plains once had a contract but may now be heading towards self-publishing. If I do that, I would call it The Publican’s Daughter, a better title to attract online readers. As I write this, I see that I seem to favour place or setting in my original novel titles. Changing this one to The Publican’s Daughter will strip the story from its locale, which is fundamental to it. Still, how many readers know about the gidgee tree (Acacia cambegei), known colloquially as the stinking wattle because it stinks when in flower. It is an ideal symbol for this dark tale, but pretty obscure for marketing so choices must be made.

Title Showcase: Flash and Micro Fiction

I wrote the short pieces in this section to go with the two titles I discarded years ago. The first is just over 400 words, a bit shy of a flash fiction word count which can be up to 1,000 words but a bit too long to be micro fiction. The second piece is micro-fiction, as it falls short of 400 words. It fascinates me that the two titles have stayed with me for 30-40 years without ever being written down. For a mind like mine that increasingly relies on the internet to remember things, that says something.

The Sexual Adventures of a Middle-aged Backpacker

The Grizzle and Giggle Club

Both of these small pieces could just as well have alternative titles such as ‘Noir afghan‘ and ‘Pink Ganja’ which may sound catchier but, to me, the dope is incidental to the deeper meaning of the stories. What do think? ‘The Grizzle and Giggle Club’ is bit shy of its original intention but I didn’t have enough words to grizzle much!

Title Tips

1. Titles are fun but take care, play with them every which way, until you get them right.

2. In On Gidgee Plains, Katherine’s young lover, Jimmy, teaches her how to distance from her emotions by naming things, giving titles to bad stuff that happens in her family. The practice objectifies situations, takes disturbing events and makes them into things, separate from oneself. In that sense, naming things and creating titles can be therapeutic.

3. It doesn’t hurt to come up with a title before you start to write. It can always be changed, but when a title echoes inside of you, you know you have a winner.

Try This

Rummage around in the drawers of your life and find mistakes, failures, incidents, events or relationship blowups that you tend to chew over from time to time. Give these ghosts of yesterday, these life snippets, titles. Then write about them as though you are telling a story, turn them into fiction.

Breakthroughs come when you relax.

Make up heaps of titles, then write.

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