My novel has a title!

 

It’s weird but it’s very hard for me to talk about my writing on my blog. I don’t know why. It seems like it comes more naturally to other people, but I really have to do a conscious effort to remind myself that I should post something from time to time. Not because I think that omg everyone’s sooo interested in it. Becuase uh no? XD It’s really because once I start writing, it feels really good to do it. The problem is talking myself into writing that post.

Anyway, as I was saying, my novel’s got a title!

A better news would be, my novel’s got… you know… all the words! But for now, I’ll have to settle with the excitement of having a title that feels right.

For a while, this was going to be titled City of lost words and dead ends, which worked well enough. But it always bothered me that it had the formula X of X and X. These titles are awesome and all, but I wanted something more original than that. There are so many books out there that don’t use this kind of titles and stand out because of their cleverness. I don’t know much about cleverness and wit, but at least I wanted to arrive at a title that didn’t use a formula.

So, I always knew the one I had was only a placeholder.

I know titles are not set in stone because when authors go the traditional route, the publisher can even change it and everything, but still, I just need something to call it.

 

 

I guess my story’s fate is to have a long title. It just fits. 

 

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An excerpt

Because I’ve never shared one of this story, aand, because I’m so excited it doesn’t even matter if it sucks.

(Of course, it’s still a draft, it needs a lot of fixing. Mainly, I need to work on the describing part a little more. So… I’m sorry in advance for any flaws!)

 

Viktor

The city was never silent. Not because of the people, not because of the machinery that kept it all going. No, it wasn’t any of those things. Because even out here, on the tiny islands that dotted the main mass of land, where there was nothing but he and the space, there was always the water.

Viktor stared at the walls of water that enclosed his entire -albeit small- world, and not for the first time wondered about what laid beyond.

It wasn’t his first time doing patrol duty on the outskirts. He usually had a partner, though. And now he knew it wasn’t because it was dangerous. But because it was so damn boring.  He was so bored, he’d begun thinking about swimming towards the barrier just to go and see what happened if he swam through it.

He turned his face away, his mind already skipping to more entertaining things, like the sweetheart that awaited him at home.

 

Cormac

The shivers and moments of pain so powerful they rendered him useless had been left in the past, or so Cormac had thought. It felt like something was eating at him, from the inside out. For more than six years, it had been dormant, barely simmering there under the surface, something deep in his skin that he couldn’t seem to get rid of.

But tonight it hurt.

Time had lost its meaning altogether. It could’ve been two minutes -like the episodes used to last- or it could’ve been hours, for all he knew.

He stumbled out of his bed, not feeling, not caring about the cold. He only knew he needed out.
He needed out.

By coincidence, or the infinite mercy of the universe, he lived in the highest floor of one of the highest buildings in the city, which was saying something.

With a strength he didn’t even know he possessed, he broke the only window in the room. And then he was sucked into the void.

 

Ariadne

For some reason, Ariadne had always associated crimes with nighttime. She knew this was ridiculous. It was perfectly possible to steal, or kill in broad daylight. But it was just this sense of protection the dark provided… When no one was looking, when you could get away with it -or had more chances of doing it, anyway.

So she committed her crime cloaked by darkness too, her only source of light coming from a state of the art desk lamp beside her.

She opened the almost alien object on the desk, the noteboook, she reminded herself. And picked up the pen.  She tested her grip on it. It was no different than the stylus used to operate screens. But now that she had the real thing in her hand, the other felt like a dull shadow.

Satisfied, Ariadne looked out the window, her thumb idly stroking the smooth surface of the pen.

And then she began to write.

 

Viktor

No sooner had Viktor conjured the image of his lady in his head, a shadow fell over him, eclipsing the moonlight. In the span of a second, he had his weapon at the ready, aimed at… nothing.

He squinted at the sky. He could have sworn…

Something hit the water behind him, a few droplets even falling at his feet. He spun on his heels, frowning at the ripples the collision had created that now were expanding to reach the shore of his little island.

Viktor frowned at the water and walked further into it, gun now trained on the nothingness in front of him, instead of the one above.

And then the creature emerged.

Like a victorious winged devil, it rose, higher and higher above the water.

And then it set the sky on fire.

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Does it change anything having another title now?

I feel more motivated, to be honest. It doesn’t change the fact that I don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to my writing, for which I always get very frustrated, but it does make me think about my story often. It makes it more official somehow. It has a name!

 

How about you?

If you’re working on a story, do you have a title already? Or is it, ‘Untitled’, ‘That Novel that has no name’, ‘the novel that shall not be named’?

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