Synchronicity

I'm a big believer in synchronicity, though I don't know if "believer" is the best word to use. What happens is that I notice, time and time again, how things tend to align in life. In my last post I talked about some of that alignment in respect to getting me back to my thesis. There's a bit more of it, too.

When I went to the library yesterday, I hit the new books first, then started roaming around the stacks, looking for titles or covers that caught my eye. Interesting to note: it seems mystery novels tend to have the most eye-catching titles. So, my selection process was pretty random. For the most part I wasn't looking for any particular author or any books I'd already heard of, just pulling stuff off because I liked the color of the cover. Of the dozen books I looked at, a few turned out to be short story collections. Any other day, none would be, they'd all be novels. In light of this, I went with it and of the half dozen books I checked out, three were these collections.

From the library I went to campus and a Hungry Eye meeting, then I went to my office to kill time before the Annie Dawid reading. Juan stopped by to pick up some files for the faculty search and while we chatted he asked if I'd like to go along on dinner with him and Annie. So, instead of killing time in the office by watching TV shows on the computer, I ate Pad Thai and chatted with an award winning short story writer whose first book was a short story collection. One of her books is a short story cycle, even.

Can you hear the "click, click, click" of things lining up before me? Sometimes it's not so much about going out and finding stuff as it is about embracing the stuff that casually comes your way.

Calling it "Totem"

"An animal, plant, or natural object serving among certain tribal or traditional peoples as the emblem of a clan or family and sometimes revered as its founder, ancestor, or guardian."
-American Heritage Dictionary

Right now, Jenny's thinking about the title for her novel and titles in general. Okay, I can springboard off of that.

"But wait, didn't you just write a post about discovering the title for your thesis?"

You got me there. Still, I feel prompted to write more about it. Sue me.

One of Jenny's questions about FJR is negotiating the balance between having a title that she likes and having one that everybody else likes. It raises another question - what's the purpose of a title? On one hand, you have a title so that people can call it something more specific than "the story about the guy who..." On the other, titles work as a key to the piece. They help readers unlock it.

Then, too, there are writers who use the title as a guide for what they're writing. For me, titles are less about creating and more about discovering. My main question for myself when I title something is, "What's the single most important part of this piece?" Once I have that question answered, I not only know where my title will come from, I also have a clearer picture of what the story needs to do. This means I know how I should write it, or how I should revise it, in order to make it do what I want it to. Put metaphorically, with the way I write, titles are like the totems for my pieces. The symbollic guide.

For now, the working title for my thesis is Totem, not so much because I'm set on that being the final title, but because it clarifies my goal for me. The idea of a totem is one thing that anchors the pieces I'm most sure will be in my thesis. It starts with Albatross and ends up some place I haven't figured out yet, but my line of sight is getting clearer. Finding the right title is like adjusting the focus on a set of binoculars, it takes some fiddling, but it helps make what you're seeing clearer.

Now, this isn't to say that once I have the title down, the rest of the story is suddenly fixed. If that were the case, this whole writing gig would be much too easy. However, I find that if I don't have a title for the piece, I have a terrible time pegging it down. Without a title that clicks, I have no guide.

No Longer the La Llarona Story

It's been interesting to see people's responses to my question on titles. For some, titles are everything, for others titles are one of the last things that come into the writing equation.

Like I mentioned, titles are a clarifying tool for me. It's like adjusting the magnification on a microscope. You're always looking at the same thing, it's just the knobs that you adjust, but all of a sudden that slide you're looking at is clear instead of fuzzy and you finally know exactly what you're looking at.

Yesterday I spent some time asking myself questions about the La Llarona story and what it was really about, what was I really getting at, who was truly my focal figure, and what exactly was I trying to say about them? At the end of these questions, I had a title: When Ben Bucater Met His First Ghost. It's not a perfect title, and I may change the wording a bit, but it's there. It says what I want it to and now I have the right magnifying lense to use when I look the story over again and do some revising.

It's a small thing for some, but a big "click" moment for me. It even makes that sound in my head, a metallic sound like the sound of switching lenses on a microscope (thus the analogy, see?).