Tue 1 May 2007
Help!
Posted by Liza under Books, Writing, Are you bored yet?
I need a clever title for a book chapter.
A few months back, I proposed to write a chapter in a book on Mommy Blogging.
My chapter is going to be on how/why I decided to launch the Lesbian Family blog, and then to recruit lots of other wonderful writers to make it both really serve the community and be sustainable.
And now the editors want a title for my chapter, and they need it yesterday.
Any ideas???
May 1st, 2007 at 9:44 am
How about “Gathering rose buds” or “Casting a/the/my net” (since chapter is about getting lots of good things together)
May 1st, 2007 at 11:54 am
I am ramming my thinking cap on my head and pulling it down to my ears. Okay. One expects a pun. Also something that gets at the gist of your chapter. One wants the title to indeed preview the content. What’s the thesis of your chapter, its nugget of truth, etc.?
May just ask all these questions offline, too, since it’s so thrilling to me that you’re contributing a chapter on a book about Mommy Blogging that I want to drivel on about it with you.
But I’ll still throw a bunch of skeet targets up there for you to shoot at. “Mommies Blogging”? (depends on the book title; would be fun to riff off of it) “Two Blogging Mommies are Better than One?” “An Army of Lesbian Mom Bloggers Can’t Be Wrong”? (only would work for those w/ old-timey 2nd wave lesbo feminist context in ‘em. I seem to not be able to resist the preposterously long titles & slogans). “We Are Lesbian Family”? (after the Sister Sledge song).
I’ll keep thinking. Congrats on the chapter submission, and I’m so happy for all of us to get “represented,” and for the other readers of the book to have their eyes opened to what’s up in the lesbian family blogosphere!
May 1st, 2007 at 7:23 pm
I got your email about this (and your call about the surprise contact you had recently) — would love to talk about the latter when we both have a chance to be on the phone.
Regarding a title, Polly has asked the key question — what does/will your chapter say? The title should reflect your theme, central metaphor, etc.
May 1st, 2007 at 8:21 pm
I think the central themes of the chapter will be on interconnectedness and the
valueabsolute necessity of community involvement for any project like LesbianFamily, or parenting, to succeed.May 1st, 2007 at 9:12 pm
That’s a good start — I was just thinking that your title needs to distinguish your chapter from others in the book. You don’t need to mention mommies or blogging, for example — that’s obvious.
“We Are (Online) Family”
“We’re Here, We’re Queer, We’re Blogging — Get Into It”
???
May 2nd, 2007 at 12:00 pm
This is exciting news! I’m terrible at titles but will think on it. I generally like to pull an interesting, quirky phrase or metaphor out of the material itself as a title. Do you have any of it written yet? Maybe take a look at the paragraph that you’re most proud of to go mining for a title.
We never did have that conversation about book proposals. I am, however, submitting a slightly cleaned up version of my piece on non-bio motherhood as an unsolicited op/ed piece to several magazined and newpapers as you suggested we try and do…
May 2nd, 2007 at 2:46 pm
“It Takes a Lesbian Village”?
Which of course reminds me of the joke on the Hillary book: “It Takes a Village (To Keep an Eye on My Husband.”
I’ll keep mulling.
May 2nd, 2007 at 7:40 pm
“I Spark-ed Us” is too obscure, isn’t it? Or phrased another way, raise your hand if that reference even makes sense to you.
I’m leaning towards “We Are Lesbian Family” with some longer funny tag line after a colon, like, “How I had an infant, a good idea, an unmanagably large project, a full-time job, and an amazing community, all in the same year.” I’m also toying with trying to work the phrase, “stop climbing on the table!” into the descriptive tag line.