WORDS OF A REVOLUTION by eden unger bowditch

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As I sit here from this side of the ocean, word from Cairo sounds as horrid to me as to everyone else here. But I know what it was like last time when the news was scary.

 We played games and read stories together. Families got together for garden parties. Yes, there were moments when the tanks rolled in that one could almost hear a violin being played among the gunshots. Were we all Nero while Rome was burning? Or were we simply trying to maintain grace under fire, literally?

Our neighborhood is an international community and a grand mix of many different people. We all bonded together during the worst of it and have worked together to come to terms with a very different Egypt. Now, my family and I are in the US. We plan to be here for the year, at least. But, ringing in our ears, we hear the sounds of a world uncertain and a future full of fear.

When we, as authors, write, we want to bring our readers on a journey. We want them to join us in our strange new worlds. Escaping into a book can be one of the most profound experiences in someone’s life. Enduring uncertainty and conflict may sometimes depend on escaping from it. Having books to share and, for each of us, having books to savor privately, was how my family managed to wake up each day, ready for whatever we had to face.

I want to take this moment to thank all of you, the brilliant minds who author the worlds we are privileged to experience whenever we step into the pages of your books.

Terrific Titles

I recently read a writer friend's manuscript, and while I though it was a wonderful story, I was honest with her about the fact that I thought she needed a better title. The one she had chosen felt a bit generic to me and didn't really capture the exciting nature of the book.

Titles can be a tricky business. You only get a handful of words to represent the entirety of your story, and these words will be the first impression many readers get of your work, whether they encounter it online, in a catalog, or on a spine on a bookstore shelf. It could pique their interest, make them take a closer look, or turn them off altogether. It's so important to choose your title carefully.

Some tips I think are helpful:

• The title should reflect the tone of the book. You obviously wouldn't want to slap a humorous title on a book with a dark, serious tone. The title should hint to readers what they can expect inside. I think Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events titles (The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room, The Wide Window, The Austere Academy, etc.) do this perfectly. Not only do you get a sense of the rather bleak tone of the books from both the series title and the individual book titles, but these also hint at the dark humor and playfulness of the stories themselves.
• Specific is better general. The title of one of my favorite childhood books, The Pokey Little Puppy, wouldn't have nearly the same charm if the author had just called it The Puppy. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is a highly specific title, making use of both the main character's name and the object forming the main storyline. It's much more personal, exciting, and appealing than a generic title. Can you imagine if it had been called something like The Wizard School? Not nearly as catchy, or, to segue into the next bulletpoint, unique.
• Unique is important. If someone googles your book title or searches it on Amazon or types it into a library catalog, you want it to come up. Something like Little Lamb is going to bring up a gazillion hits. Something like From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler is going to hit home--not to mention it really makes the book stand out.
• Titles that create suspense or intrigue are doing their job. If it piques the reader's interest, arouses curiosity, or creates suspense, a reader will pick up the book or read its description to find out more. One of my childhood favorites was The Secret Garden. The word "secret" gives that title a wonderful air of suspense. Why is the garden secret? Who would make a secret garden? It is secret because it's dangerous or hidden in some way? Perhaps I should pick up the book to find out more...
• A lot of middle grade books seem to include the main character's name in the title. The Tale of Desperaux, the Harry Potter books, the Ramona books by Beverly Cleary. This seems especially true when the character is particularly colorful and distinctive, perhaps hinting that the character is going to be driving force behind the story. This might be a good technique if you have a real stand-out main character--or a character with a really interesting or unique name.

What are your favorite tips on titles?

-Dawn Lairamore

THE READER, THE AUTHOR, AND THE LIVING TEXT, eden unger bowditch

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My MA thesis was on ambiguity in literary texts. I proposed that ambiguity(and I do not mean obscurity and lack of clarity, simply the capacity for being understood in more than one way) is at the heart of literature. Unlike any other form of writing (weather reports, legal briefs, reportage, etc) it is actually necessary to a literary text, something we want. Without an open avenue for the reader within the text, there is no way for the reader to find a personal place in it. I asked two questions: Does a text have meaning without a reader? Is a text changed by the readers who read it? If we can accept that, without reading it, a text is only an object without a reader, then we can say that a reader changes the text by reading it. If a reader is what gives it meaning, then the reader has affected the text. Think of books you have read and how they change when you reread them. Think of stories you have written and how they change when you reread them.

People make a distinction between author and reader. As authors, we know that as we put words on a page, they come forth and we direct them, but often are directed by them. We interpret what we write and then, when we reread, we may change our minds. Can we really say were we wrong before and right now? Or do we, as readers of our own words, see something different when we revisit our own words?

It is easy to think about rereading and reinterpreting other works, but as writers, we must consider that we, too, come back to our own texts as readers and find new meaning. With every experience, we change. It makes sense to see how we, with those experiences, see new things when we reread.

Ambiguity allows for texts to live throughout history, be reread as we grow older, and loved by different generations. For me, I rarely feel that someone else’s interpretation of my work, if coming from a careful reading, is wrong. If I write something poorly or if someone misreads a name or a section of a chapter and goes off in a wrong direction, that is one thing. But someone breathing new ideas and life into a story, mine or others’, makes for a new and exciting journey through that story. The reader heads into the world of the story with different eyes, each time. That is the magic of reading. That is what makes the reader and the author (the initial reader) part of the living text.