Mary J. McCoy-Dressel

#MFRWauthor Blog Challenge

It’s WEEK 8 of the MFRW 52-week blog challenge!

The theme this week is: “How I Choose a Book Title.”

How do I choose a book title? I had to ask myself this question before I could write out the answer.

When the perfect book title finally comes to me, I feel it in my heart.

Sometimes I have a title before I have the story. I love when this happens. Other times the title comes to me from a line or scene in the book. Then there are times when I look at my cover models in relation to the plot of the story to see if they can inspire a title. Oftentimes, it’s plain-out-damn-hard to find the right title.

Most of you remember the conflict I had when I found the perfect title for Of the Cowboy’s Own Accord. Well, you also know this title was NOT my first choice. Here’s the whole story at this LINK.

How I Choose:

Before I settle on a book title, I search Amazon and Barnes and Noble. If no other book has my title, then YAY! But, as with the original title I had for Dane’s book, my beginning searches didn’t show up any other book wearing my title. I knew it was a song title. In fact, I didn’t mind if it showed up in a search for a song, but I didn’t want to have the same title as another author.

As my previous blog post stated, I had gathered together my images for the cover, title, subtitle, and my tagline to send to my cover designer. I nearly hit send. At the last moment, I decided to do one more search.

Hallelujah.

Another book had the same title, and the author had even asked the songwriters for permission to use the title, though it wasn’t copyrighted or trademarked. Oh, damn! Now, I had to start all over. This killed me. Throughout the writing of this book, the title had been decided, so it was one thing I didn’t have to worry about. In the book, I had perfected a line to go with the book title. Yes, then my heart had been crushed.

Now the real process started all over again. Brainstorm. Brainstorm some more. Keep brainstorming. Cry. Then I brainstormed with an author friend. Each time I came up with a new title, I got shot down in a search. I twisted the original title around to be different. Then I’d search. Same thing. I did this over and over with no luck. How would I ever find a title? I scanned through my book, waiting for the spark of inspiration. Nothing jumped out at me. I checked through my research notes and websites of interest.

My hero is an Army Ranger. I played with the idea a bit. I researched some more and came up with another title. No, I wasn’t crazy about it, but it would work. I went to Amazon and searched again. I wanted and needed to be crazy about it.

Oh. My. God.

I don’t remember what led me back to the beginning of my research, but I reread a Ranger’s Motto… Sua Sponte is Latin for “Of Their Own Accord” the 75^th Ranger Regiment regimental motto. There it was. My Ranger was also a cowboy, and he had to make a big decision of his own accord. The title sounded a hundred times better than the original title. I was CRAZY about this one. No, Crazy in love this time! This my friends, is the process I used to find my title: Of the Cowboy’s Own Accord.

I go through this process with most of my titles:

• Brainstorm by writing out titles until something clicks
• Search for other books with the same title (I do this more than once in case a new book comes out with this title while I’m still writing or editing.)
• Sleep on it—let my muse figure it out.
• Does one particular scene in the book stand out that would make a good title?
• Stop thinking about it and keep writing.
• Brainstorm some more if the title hasn’t materialized yet.
• Brainstorm with a friend.
  

  ---

I’ve struggled with nearly all of my titles, but with the book titled Hey, Cowboy, I had brainstormed twenty-five titles. When all was said and done, I went back to the first title I had for this book, which was Hey, Cowboy.

Truth be told…Hey, Cowboy is the title on another book, but not in my genre. I discovered this after my book had been published.

Now my brain is tired after reliving all this brainstorming.

Images credit: Pixabay

I can’t be the only one with a process for finding a book title. Check out the participating authors to see their process for finding their correct title.

This is a Blog Hop!