Searching for a Title

I always wait until I’m finished with the first draft of a manuscript before I give the work a title.  Deciding on a title is tortuous for me, I don’t know why, but it is.  When selecting Murphy’s Troubles as the title for my first novel I spent a morning writing down potential titles in two columns on plain paper.  I filled three pages with about sixty candidates.  I set aside my “brain drain” for a few days.  I was exhausted from the process of trying to be creative for a catchy title.  After three days I picked up the list and read over the potential titles.  I started by eliminating titles I definitely didn’t want and reduced the list to about forty.  Again, I set aside my pages for a few days.  The second step was to circle titles I thought would work and reduced the list to about ten.   I waited several more days and then reviewed the list of ten and at the top of the third page – Murphy’s Troubles screamed out to me.  That was it!

My process for selecting the title for my second novel was quite different.  I didn’t wait until I finished the first draft before bestowing a title on my work.  Ian Murphy is a troubled man, suffering from chronic depression and alcoholism most of his adult life.  He is a loner who is often alone with his own thoughts and demons.

In parallel after the 1998 Peace Accord resolution passed by huge margins in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland a sense of hope and relief from violence spread throughout both countries.  None of the factions in Northern Ireland were realistic about how difficult it would be to form a government.  Hope was shattered in August 1998 with the bombing in Omagh and the founding of the Real IRA to replace the Provisional IRA.  Northern Ireland was cast again into the darkness of terrorism.

Both my protagonist Ian Murphy and Northern Ireland struggle to get Out of Darkness.