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anewphilosophy

New wife, new graduate, New Yorker.

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Title Help?

Posted by anewphilosophy Posted on: 11/03/09

Title Help?

As I've previously mentioned here, I'm not very good with titles-- usually I either come up with a title that I never actually develop into a poem/story, or else I write a cool poem/story and then can't think of a suitably cool title. I spent months trying to title my thesis, and in the end, I was still unhappy with what I chose. But I feel like this whole novel thing will be a lot easier if I have a title first, so that I can kind of weave all the themes together with that aspect in mind.

So I wanted to run a few titles by you guys, to see what you think. (And yes, I know book titles should be underlined/italicized instead of contained in quotation marks, but my text formatting buttons won't show up on PNN today for some reason...)

1. "Heavenly Country"

This comes from the Eucharistic part of the Episcopal prayer book; the priest implores God to "bring us to that heavenly country, where with [insert names of some of the priest's favorite saints] and all your saints we may enter the everlasting heritage of your sons and daughters." I'm planning on having Simon, the main character (who is an Episcopal priest) do a little reflection on what "that heavenly country" would be like, if you could get there right now. Might be confusing as a title, though-- I wouldn't want people to think they were about to read an inspirational religious tract and end up with a novel about a mentally ill preacher's wife.

2. "World Without End"

This is also from the Book of Common Prayer, and comes at the end of an invocation. I like this title, mostly because it just sounds so pretty (I love how Anglicans never can just say "forever," or "always"-- we have to say "world without end" or "everlasting") but it's already the title of a British novel about the Black Death, so I dunno.

3. "This Fragile Earth"

Again, this comes from the prayer book, specifically from Eucharistic Prayer C, when the celebrant discusses the grandiosity of the world God has allowed to come into being: "the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile Earth, our island home." It's always been one of my favorite passages-- I mean, I'm one of those people who can see science as an expression of God, not as an enemy of faith, and this sentence captures the beauty and terror of our world, as well as the frightening and fascinating delicacy of our civilization's very existence. The way the planet is described here-- "fragile," an "island,"-- suggests so strongly the need to protect it, to be good stewards of what we've been given, and to appreciate all that we have, as it's really pretty amazing that we have it.

Again, though, I don't want to confuse people-- I would hate to have folks think they're reading an environmental tract by, like, Al Gore, only to discover, disappointingly, that they've only found a third-rate novel written by some chick with a totally ridiculous pen name.

I'm putting up a poll on the side-- please help me out by voting for the title you like best. If you don't like any of them, suggestions are welcome! I'd like to stick to the whole religious theme, but it doesn't have to be an Episcopal, or even Christian, reference.


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