Saturday, March 1, 2008

Books and moods and bad titles

We went to see my dad (stepdad number two) quickly this afternoon, and he told me that his sister had found my book in a shop the other day. She got really excited and bought three copies, one for each of her grandchildren. So I'm expecting millions of dollars of royalties to flood my coffers any day now. Actually that's probably true, except that they will be Zimbabwean dollars and I will only be able to buy a stick of chewing gum with them. All the same, it's nice to know that it's still out there. My publisher passes on the occasional letter to me from a reader, and it's always a surprise to remember that my book is out in the world being read. A nice surprise.

We haven't done much this weekend. Yesterday was a real energy trough for me - it was raining, and gloomy, and I was tired, so I lazed on the couch for most of the day and then felt guilty about it. I'm not looking forward to winter, although it has its good points, because that's when depression tends to rear its ugly head. It's amazing how much my mood is affected by the weather. I think it has been excellent timing, writing the first draft in summer. Winter is a good time to do all that nitty-gritty editing and rewriting stuff, but I think creating from scratch would be a bit of a slog while my energy and mood levels were so low.

One thing I forgot to mention after my meeting with my advisor the other day is that I confessed my complete lack of talent for coming up with good titles for my books. On the computer, they are all saved under names like "Book 1", "Book 2", "Other Book". The current one is actually saved as "Chapter 1" because I intended to save out all the chapters as separate documents, but that didn't happen (stupid idea, actually, until I come to the editing. It needs to be one solid mass of text while it's in a state of flux). So, my advisor has promised to keep his eyes open for good phrases or images that would make a snappy title. I really need the help.

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