Quick Wit's a Drag...

There was a story in the New York Post last week that got some attention online. The headline was OREGON MAN DRIVING STOLEN CAR CRASHES INTO WOMAN DRIVING ANOTHER STOLEN CAR. My timeline was full of tweets from people sharing the news story, all with a similar perspective. 'No one would commission that', 'I'd be told my pitch was too far-fetched', or, 'It's the perfect meet-cute!', were typical comments. It has to be said the majority of my timeline are writers and creatives so I smiled along at the shared joke and carried on with my day. Until I scrolled past the winning tweet, that was. The one that made me LOLZ for whole seconds of my life. After someone had shared the story with the comment 'Okay here's my pitch we open on...' someone rather witty had replied, 'Please call this "Bonnie and Collide." BOOM. I know, right? That was proper funny. I PMSLed and ROFLed and everything. 

I know now that Ed Solomon
doesn't need the exposure,
but hey, a gag's a gag.

The person with the 'Bonnie and Collide' zinger was unknown to me. Their Twitter name was @ed_solomon and I lamented on how marvellous their reply had been, before giving their profile a quick look. Yeah, so anyway, it turns out that Ed Solomon is a big-deal screen writer, responsible for films like Men in Black and Bill and Ted. I doubt he needs me to tell him he's good with words, but hey, I'll say it anyway. Amongst other things, Ed Solomon does a belting one-liner.

Of course there's a reason behind all this. You know me by now. I always have a point, even when I hide it behind pointlessly long paragraphs of build up. My point is, I am terrible at one liners. I am terrible at quick-witted puns, clever word play, and being playful with phrasing. I just am. I know my writing weaknesses, and the things I've just listed come under that category. Now before you get out your violins and offer up a heartfelt string accompaniment to my pain, it's all fine. I'm good at other stuff. Stuff like describing locations and settings in enough detail to awaken the imagination of the reader. Creating engaging characters that are flawed but likeable. Writing dialogue that feels authentic and hooks you in. I'm happy that I've got enough going for me to keep on with the writing. I just know that pithy phrases and one line zingers take me ages to dream up. This is why I would be a terrible political slogan writer. They rely on precisely this type of skill. Yes We Can. Deeds Not Words. I'd have been no use to Obama or the suffragettes. (Although even I would have spotted the obvious flaw in the Eat Out to Help Out campaign. Maybe Rishi Sunak's a bigger feminist than we all realised?)

All shit.

So, I'm no good at word play or slogans. We can accept that as a given. But I'm approaching the point in the writing process where I need to be. Why? Well, put simply, Book Three needs a title. It's time to work out what to call my current labour of love. And as I know from past experience, I find this bit really hard.

Book naming is a pain. It's a longwinded, ball ache of a job until you find the right one. And when you do, it's suddenly lovely. The unnamed project has an identity. You can label the folder on your desktop with something more personal than BOOK. I am not at the lovely stage yet. If I were, I'd be able to crack on and commission a cover, but I'm not so I can't. I'm in a bit of a fog about it all. The thing is, I've been here twice before (three times if you count my first unpublished practice novel.) I've written about finding the specific titles for both my previous books*, but that doesn't help me now. There are no short cuts. For me this is a process, and one that takes as long as it takes. The good news is, I have started. Here are my thoughts so far

1. This book is from the perspective of three characters. So I've gone through all the Rule of Three, Three's A Crowd, Best of Three style phrases. The thing is, they all sound naff and dated. My book isn't either of those things. And plucking a known phrase with the word 'three' in it, isn't really word play. It's just using a phrase that has a tenuous link to one aspect of the set up. So I've moved on.

2. The three characters are all dealing with something big. Divorce, bereavement, a mid-life crisis, getting older - that sort of thing. And they are all, in their own way, looking for change. So, I've got another short list going with things like 'Getting There, Any Time Soon, One Day Soon, Almost There' etc etc you get the gist. The trouble with this is the perfect title already exists. It's a Men At Work song called Waiting For My Real Life To Begin. This is a problem as it perfectly encapsulates the period before the characters have their breakthrough. But it's been done so I've moved on from that too.

3. I thought I had it. A paragraph at the start of the book details the difficulty of making new friends at a later age. One of the characters realises she needs some wing people. (Not wingmen. There's no need to limit herself.) So I searched my brain and came up with Hunting For Wingpeople. I thought that was it. That was the winner. Then I realised, about three minutes later that I had simply bastardised Taika Waititi's 2016 film, Hunt For the Wilderpeople. I mean, I know all of art is based on something, somewhere else, but that felt a little on the nose.

There are worse titles for Book Three than, 
Girls, Totalitarian Regimes and Other Steps to Madness.

The upshot is, I'm still looking at, and mulling over options. There are other things to consider, of course. This book will follow on from Carry the Beautiful, so ideally it should also be a three word title. I spent quite a bit of time listing other appropriate adjectives that could follow from Carry the... for this one, but it's harder than you think. Well, harder than you think to come up with something that makes sense to the book. Listing adjectives is easy enough. Carry the Scary, Carry the Ginormous, Carry the Powerful... I could do that all day. Maybe I'll keep it simple. Armistead Maupin called his follow up to Tales of the City, More Tales of the City. And then he wrote Further Tales of the City. As his words and his books are as good as they get, it's not a bad plan. I might just go with Carry the Beautiful II. Or Carry the Beautiful Returns. Or More Carry the Beautiful. Look, I told you this wasn't my forte. Just be glad I'm not a political slogan writer, or quick wit on Twitter. I know my limits.**

Have a lovely week, folks.

*Carry the Beautiful's naming process, from 2016

 Leeza McAuliffe Has Something To Say's naming process from 2018

**My greatest one-liner moment in recent times came last week. (Bear with me, I have to set the scene. It'll be worth it, promise.) My brother and I had driven into Wales in order to visit our parents who had been locked down since March. Because Wales had been stricter in its COVID procedures, we'd made jokes on the family WhatsApp group about border control, trench warfare, and breaking through barricades. (Because we are children.) That evening, I was typing about our successful return to England from the Chester services carpark as my brother got an emergency Maccies. My Dad, in reply to something I'd said about snipers said, 'Sounds like a war book is planned.' And QUICK AS A FLASH, I replied with 'All Quiet on the Chester Front?'

BOOOOOOOOM. MIC DROP. THANK YOU AND GOODNIGHT.

I can't lie, I was made up with myself. When Dom got back in the car, I told him how funny I'd been in the actual moment. Despite this being an obvious fact to those on the WhatsApp group, when I got in an hour later, no one had replied. No one had responded in any way, not even a laughing emoji. The chat had moved onto the best date for a post-lockdown BBQ. When I got in to bed that night, I checked again, and only Dom, the brother that had been with me at the time, had given my joke a few hand claps. He didn't mean them. He just knew I needed the affirmation when I'd been so chuffed with my EXCELLENT PLAY ON WORDS.

(I don't think they knew the book All Quiet on the Western Front. That must have been the reason. The problem must be them, surely?)

Soooo.  Anyhooo. I'll probably stop going on about my family WhatsApp grievances now. But you can see why I'm so concerned about my book naming abilities? Can't you??

(Seriously though. ALL QUIET ON THE CHESTER FRONT! Frigging hilarious.)