The Nameless Baby

When I was in college, one of my writing professors described the writing process as being similar to giving birth. You conceive an idea and nurture it along and then it's birthed in a book. I was skeptical at the time, but having written a couple of book length works now, I see her point.

Here's my problem. My most recent writing baby is nameless. I have a cheat sheet at home with about 15 titles of books I hope to write...and a book written with no title in sight. It's like having a nine month old kid with no name! So frustrating!

Titles have never been my strong point. In fact, most of what I wrote in college and probably 90% of my published articles were titled by my friends. Perhaps I should track some of those college friends down and tell them to give me a title for this book!

I didn't worry about it for a while. I thought the title would just pop up in a chapter somewhere and I'd know it when I saw it typing out on the screen. That didn't happen. I thought the title might appear in repeated phrases that showed up repeatedly of their own accord throughout the book. It didn't work. I thought it would just mysteriously settle into my brain. Nope.

Do you know how hard it is to write a query letter to pitch a book that has no name?

You know, Chris Rice's "Untitled Hymn" did pretty well on the charts....maybe I should just call this one "Untitled Advent Thoughts" and forget it.