Titles are Terrors!

Everyone has their quirks. Things that they obsess over. Some people spend forever naming their characters. For me, it's titles.

I can never come up with a title I'm satisfied with. Not for a short story, a book, or even a blog post. The blog title here, Making Waves, came from a friend's suggestion. I have working titles for most of the things I write, but I wouldn't want to really publish under any of those names. Most of them are the names of the lead character, or else the main setting. Baby, Cammie, and a second draft Cammmmmmmie, CaraInHospital, Celeste, Chapter1, Chapt1, ChapterOne, (I can't remember what those are!) Fire, Grandparnets (yes with the misspelling), Jess, JohnRook, StellaSuccubus, MrButtons, and NicolsAnna are the names of all the stories I've started that haven't been sorted into my subfolders. I'm usually crazy about organizing my folders but these are things that I'm not sure about yet. 9 of the 15 have names in them, or 10 if you count the one that should be Grandparents.

My point? I suck at titles. The books in my as-of-yet-unnamed Series all have bad titles.
1) Plague (because it's about a plague)
2) Enemy (because its about two people who are enemies in war, but friends in reality)
3) Reysore (because it's set in a place called the Reysore Colony. There originally was another book after this one but I think I will combine them.)
4) The Circle (Because it talks about an organization called The Circle. I'm creative, aren't I?)

What am I going to do if I ever try to publish? Titles are terrors. Will a publisher help me with that? Or do I need to find myself someone who is good at titles to read and title it first?

And what do I call the series? That's what started my mind on this course to begin with. I want a name for the series. That's all.

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Age Appropriate

How do you know if something is age appropriate in a book? My book, The Circle, is YA, and that's recently put a bit of a hold on my writing. By definition YA is 14-20. However, I remember reading YA books when I was 8. I'm certain that my book isn't appropriate for the standard 8 year old. I wrote a few thousand words, and moved beyond a key scene. But now I want to go back and get rid of it to make it more age appropriate for your standard 8 year old.

Even when I was a kid, I found myself second guessing everyone I said to kids younger than myself. I couldn't remember what I had known about when. I was afraid to swear for fear that they would be scared. I found dirty jokes to be the funniest thing ever, but I was afraid if I even hinted at them around kids a little younger than me, that I would either confuse them or horrify the. When I was 12 I wrote in giant letters in my diary "TWELVE IS ENOUGH" meaning that if I was talking to someone who was 12 or older, I shouldn't be afraid of saying something that the kids didn't know. Those words have stuck out in my head since then. I remember eating lunch at school with my best friends and making all sorts of sexual jokes. Pointing out second meanings of things, and swearing like a sailor, just because I knew that school lunches were minimally supervised and I could get away with it. The funny thing is that I was the "good girl" the one who wasn't supposed to know about anything. The one who at 16, you'd still wonder whether she had even heard of sex.

I'm not 12 anymore, and I'm thoroughly embarrassed thinking about all I said then. I'm questioning the wisdom of "Twelve is enough." I'm also wondering how deep into it I can go, logically with my writing. I'm not talking specifically about sex, but things that surround it. One my characters, Christine is pregnant. Christine isn't a kid, she's 30, but she's childishly stubborn, and refuses to take responsibility for her actions. On top of that she is ashamed of her pregnancy, because of her current life situation. She confides in Missy, my narrator who IS just a kid. Christine is considering abortion. I'm considering skipping that part of the story. Unfortunately that puts a huge plot hole in the story. If Christine isn't pregnant adn questioning abortion, the events following it wouldn't happen the way that they did. So she HAS to be pregnant. and she HAS to be considering abortion. Should I just scrap that whole bit and then try and find another logical reason for hte events that follow? Should I just scrap the events that follow adn change the entire plot-line of the entire story? Or should I just say I don't care about the 8 year olds who read my story. But then what about the non-8-year-olds who find it inappropriate to even put a controversial topic into something like this? Because I'm sure there are a few. I'm actually quite certain family members of mine wouldn't approve, and I really do want my family to approve.

I know the standard rule is "Don't write for the reader, write for yourself," but how can I be proud of my book if everyone I know thinks I crossed an uncrossable?

This is unfinished. I haven't yet decided what to do. I'll touch back on this once I figure out what the right thing to do is. Meanwhile, I'd totally love to hear your take on this.

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Dreaded First Post

I started writing my first post here, and somehow blogger managed to delete it. I started writing it again in wordperfect, and somehow that ate it too. I've decided that my original first post just isn't meant to be.

I'm not sure where to start. Starting something, be it a new blog, a new book, or meeting new people, is always hard for me. It makes me a little nervous, because I wonder whether things will work out in the end. Starting a new blog about writing, after I just had a three day breakdown in which I didn't write AT ALL makes me even more anxious.

Am I supposed to say what I'll be doing here on this blog? That's easy. Talking about writing my books. Talking about books I read.

Do I talk about where I am currently with my writing? That's a hassle. I don't even know where I am. I started with 5 individual novels, was focusing on one, and then somehow, they all merged into one lovely series. Oops.

Maybe I introduce myself? But no, that's what I have a Bio for. Right? I'm bad at introducing myself, so that will have to do for you. Whatever isn't mentioned there you can figure out as you follow me on this crazy journey I'm taking. (I had a silly metaphor here, but I took it out. I love metaphors but this one was bordering on too tacky to exist. I point this out because I'm sure you'll find a few more of these in other posts.)

I think I'm done. Now that I've got the dreaded first post out of the way, I think I can write something decent.

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