This is a bit of a sidetrack.. see what I did there? None of my novels have a train in them.. oops yes they do.. nearly forgot. In ‘Bags’ there was a part of the story where it was getting a bit slow so I took them on a journey. The whole family got on a train. It happened that they lived on the east so travelled on the East coast rail track which took them to Kings Cross and from there a short walk across the road takes you to the Eurostar. Before I knew it they were in Paris for a weekend.
Writing about trips which included train travel allowed me to indulge myself. I love trains and travelling on trains, can’t help it, don’t know where it came from. Colleagues have recently given me a notebook to keep train numbers in.. ooh shiny! You’ll be very pleased to hear I’ve resisted.. mainly because my memory’s not what is was and I can’t remember the number of the engines I like most.. oops did I say that out aloud? Drat.. on to titles.. quickly!
Guaranteed first question, when a non-writer finds out I’m writing a novel, will be what’s it called? That always stumped me! How do I know what it’s called, it’s not finished and I’ve not had to think about that yet. I would be embarrassed and start explaining what it was about, what the overall story involved and some of the characters. The title? Do we have titles to our lives? No. Why should my characters and their lives have titles? When I tell a friend a story, something that’s happened to me, does it need a title?
Eventually I gave in and realised that if the title is important to others I needed to make it important to me. My novels needed titles. Now when I’m asked I can reply, “The current books I’m editing are ‘Bags’, ‘Holiday Stories’ and ‘Dream Gardener’”. What do people ask you when they find out you write novels? When do you get the title?
My AtoZchallenge posts are about writing, parts of my novels or some research I need to do for them. I’m not allowing myself to write about anything other than topics linked to the books, my books.
lynnelives 