I got the Title right

January 11, 2009

Of course I didn't get much done that first day. It was classic stuff. I typed "The" and I was stuck. I hadn't even come up with a title yet. I thought it would come out in the wash after I'd written a chapter or two.

So I went back to the doodles on my copy of Dinosaur in a Haystack. I poured over them, but I kept coming back to the first one - the one of a spirally shell with the "Shell People" caption - and then it came to me. At first I didn't like the word. It seemed too ambiguous and it looked weird, but it started to grow on me, so I typed Paleopeople at the top of the one word manuscript and scrolled down the page to type in the second word of my soon to be but didn't really give it a chance in hell to reach the bookshelves novel.

My agent in New York has just recently hit the streets with the finished script and, despite incredible amounts of editing over the last year or so, the title remains Paleopeople. At least I got that one right. That was lesson one. Make that title good. It is the first thing everybody sees: the agents, the editors and the readers.