Working Titles

Well, there it is. The title of my blog. Someone was paying attention to my tagline and gave me this suggestion. I loved it. A great big thank you to my friend, Doralice. I think we all know a working title is a temporary title given to a project until it’s completion, such as a movie or book. Doralice and I chatted a bit about what it meant as my blog title. My thought was that it sort of signified finding my voice as a writer and that feeling of uncertainty that lingers until you have a finished product. Even then, there is uncertainty. I really liked what she said, “writers are constantly rewriting through living.”

It remains to be seen whether I will ever be able to do anything with my writing, but I will continue regardless. I simply enjoy the process and as I mentioned previously, the more I write, the more I want to write. I have always known this about myself, but it wasn’t until recently that I put this much effort into it; on my own and through writing classes. I recently read an online interview with an author named Jennifer Gooch Hummer, who just had her first book published. One of her answers struck a cord:

What is one thing you would tell aspiring writers?

“Read ‘Bird by Bird’ by Anne Lamott. It’s the best book on writing ever. The most important thing I learned from that book was to give myself permission to write horribly. So horribly you wouldn’t read it to your dog. Because inside the horribleness of those sentences, is the tiny sparkling of a voice. And sooner or later if you keep showing up at the page, you’re going to catch it.”

Not only will I read Bird by Bird, but I loved what she had to say, especially, “the tiny sparkling of a voice.” That is beautiful.