I'm not referring to things like Earl or Duke or King or whatever else you can think of. This is about the title of your book of course!

You may not realize this, but the title is extremely important. It can be the hardest thing you have to do in your writing career (if that's the case, you haven't done any editing yet have you?) and it can be so easy you'll smack yourself on the forehead and say "I could've had a V8".

In my experience, I don't title a novel until after it's finished most of the time. If I have a cover page on the novel while I'm writing it, that's entirely too much pressure and I can't even get started. Once the book is finished though, I find it so much easier to sum up the work in one or two words. I think it's because I know the story by then and I know what the point is. When I'm starting out, I don't know what twists it's going to take. What if I gave it a title that gave away the ending?

There are exceptions of course. Awakening and Resurrection (book 4 and 5 in my series right now) are already titled obviously, but I'm still writing Awakening. The only reason these are titled early is because I know what I'm doing with these two books. The first novel in the spin off series though isn't titled and the first draft is completed. I know what series it's in, but I can't think of it as anything more than Order Of The White Rose Volume 1 right now. Obviously that won't work as a working title.

Titles don't have to be elaborate works of philosophical meaning to be awesome. Is the word Twilight enough to cause a person to have an existencial crisis? No. Neither are titles like Dead Until Dark or Bad Moon Rising or City of Bones. I know when I saw Acheron as a title I almost stopped breathing, but that's because I knew instantly what the book was going to be about and Acheron is one of my all time favorite fictional characters.

If you need help finding a title, pay a visit to your local library and/or favorite bookstore. Write down any titles that strike you. Go home and read your novel while you're editing and see if anything sticks out in your mind that would sum it up without giving anything away. Prophecy is titled that way because...the story involves a prophecy and it's big. Simple and straight to the point.

Now get back to your work and finish your three pages unless you're on a minor sabbatical like I am right now. I obtained my replacement computer today so I'm taking the day off from fiction. I'll probably take tomorrow off too while the information is being replaced. I might even take Sunday off and actually have three days where I don't do any writing at all! Let's not push it. Also, if you find yourself inspriationless on Sunday night and you have HBO, check out True Blood. It's awesome if you don't mind the sex and nudity and bloody scenes. If you do, rent something.