Me: I'd like a chocolate latte.
Barista: You mean a mocha latte?
Me: (in my head) I'm so confused.
-Visit to Cafe Zajj on Tuesday
The reason for my confusion is that on Monday, at Its A Grind during the rogue writers group, I asked for a mocha latte. They said, "You mean a chocolate latte?" I'm starting to feel like there's a coffee conspiracy. Just when I think I figure out what the heck to order, they change it up on me.
Adding to my consternation about the conspiracy, the drink I had at one coffee shop tasted nothing like the one at the other. Even with an allowance for how a chocolate latte and mocha latte are presumably different things, there was nothing similar at all between the two lattes. What gives?
After we got the coffee sorted out, I found a table, flipped open my notebook, and got down to business. I only stayed about half an hour, thanks to having other things to do, but got down two hand-written pages of a story I don't yet have a name for. Usually, I can name stories pretty easily, but every now and again one comes along that just wants to be known as "the story about..." I think this maybe one of the stories I have to completely write before I can name it.
This brings us to another question. What's your relationship with titles? Do they come easily, painfully, or somewhere in between? Do some types of writing lend themselves more readily to titles than others? i.e. You name stories a lot faster than you name poems? Tell me about your process.
2 comments:
Now you'll just have to say, "I'd like a chocolate mocha latte."
I don't know that I have a process. MMG was titled right from the start, because of the first line. A:TM was a title for 2 years before I started writing anything and TNN (for The New Novel) probably won't have a title until I'm finished.
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