Previously I’ve chosen a title pretty quick. I think ‘Railroaded‘ was thought of before I even started and ‘Broken Branches‘ was pretty soon after. So this is one itch I want to scratch soon, give this thing a name and get on with the rest of it.
A couple of posts ago, I mentioned I had two potential titles; ‘Blindsided‘ and ‘The Rejected‘. I like both of them. Blindsided is a simple one word title with many connotations. The Rejected sounds like a band but also makes for a title I like. Both have something to do with the novel itself…which I think is somewhat important!
Anyway, it got me thinking…well, fantasising. What if this thing goes to print, what does the competition look like?
A search in Amazon UK in the Books category returns 70 results for Blindsided, with quite a few books having that exact same title. A search for The Rejected returns 862 results but none of them matching the title exactly – there’s 863 titles with the word ‘rejected’ in them.
So what does this mean? How should it influence my decision?
I guess it shouldn’t really. Ideally. But it does show me that ‘The Rejected‘ is a more original title, in fact, no-one has used it. That does influence me. Before this exercise I was seriously leaning towards ‘Blindsided‘, even calling my 1st draft – blindsided 1st_draft.doc – but now I’m leaning towards ‘The Rejected‘.
As you can see, on the left menu here, I’m still referring to it as ‘Novel 3‘…I haven’t fully committed yet but this is where YOU could help. What do YOU prefer?
Also, let’s throw the whole lot into the mix. Below are all most of the potential titles I’ve noted down during the whole thinking, mulling over process before starting the actual writing. Some are crap and maybe one or two are not bad.
If any catch your eye, let me know and confuse me even more!
Without Reflection,
The Reflectionless Man,
The Faceless Man,
Blindspot,
Mirrors,
Footprints, Shadows and Reflections,
You and I,
My Reflection and Me,
Fractured,
Parallel Beginnings,
Back and Forth,
Treading Water,
The Rock and The Diamond,
He Said, She Said,
Detuned,
Tuned Out.
Funnily enough, The Rejected is the last title idea I wrote down in my notebook. Is this a sign that I had already, unconsciously, settled on that as the title?
And maybe from all these potential titles you can have an educated guess about what this novel is about?! (Good luck with that! I’m not entirely sure myself).