So what’s it called now?
I Would Have Been Finished Sooner. That was one of the many considerations. Over two and a half years ago, when it was decided to turn the Rambling On manuscript into a trilogy, the inspired idea to give the three books a ‘should have, could have, would have’ theme made perfect sense. Starting with the faux pas whiskey awakening, the realisation that I should have left the bottle in Book One. Book Two with its dream-come-true achievement to cycle China lent itself to the I Could Have Been A Dreamer title, but this book – well, it was not so easy.
Sometimes I have a title before the first page of the book is written, the journey not even complete. That was the case with In Search of Greener Grass, the title came to me out of the wild Mongolian blue yonder. Other titles came from a phrase in the narrative after completion. This book has been written and rewritten, changed and changed again, it’s taken years to get it to this finished state. I’ve changed the title as frequently as my underwear, every morning I had a shining new idea and by evening I discarded it. I was dictated by the ‘I would have …’ (the long shortlist of possibilities are below).
I would lay awake at night going ‘I would have …’ and adding every relevant and clever suffix to finish off the title. This occurrence also happened when I’d ride my bike, mow the lawn, sit on a plane – always trying to find that right title. I googled the most popular things said after ‘I would have’, I looked at other book titles, I scanned the manuscript for something clever that would connect the text to the cover, as that was completed way before the writing was finished, and thus ‘Derailed’ was a working title, gone off the tracks, changed tracks, got sidetracked, been wasted, died, lied, on and on it went. I couldn’t ask in an online or social media poll because only I and a few proofreaders knew what the book was about. I needed snappy, memorable, and at the same time the title had to relate to the cover – and nothing really worked.
Walking to the school bus I was discussing the problem with my eleven-year-old Bulgarian concert buddy, pillion and backgammon opponent, saying to her, ‘If I wasn’t restricted by the first three words of the title l would have called the book A Life of Chai.’
With the brilliance of a young, lateral-thinking mind, unhampered by convention, rules and all the insomnia agonising I’d been through, she said to me, ‘Then why don’t you write on the cover: “I Would Have Called this Book A Life of Chai”?’
There was a moment’s pause, a microsecond of consideration, I caught my breath, and realised, then voiced, ‘That’s brilliant.’ I visualised the title on the cover, it would match the other two but would also stand alone and this book, although being the last part of a trilogy, does stand alone. In fact, I think as this one has the widest appeal, many readers will go back to Whiskey and start the series from the beginning after they’ve had their fill of Chai. And that is why Book Three of the Rambling On trilogy has a mute heading and an actual title, for cover aesthetics, for continuity, to complete the ‘should have, could have, would have’ theme, but at the same time having a snappy, memorable, clever and ultimately relevant title. So I gotta thank my step daughter Radost who cut through all my constraints to find the simple route to the final stage of the final book in the Rambling On trilogy
The cover still isn’t finished but that’s the story so far. Below are the list of other possible titles.
I WOULD HAVE BEEN …
Dazed
Dependent
Wasted
Wasted potential
Falling
Worse
Honest
Wary
Sued like Netflix
Censored
Sentenced
Anonymous
Sidetracked
Limited
Vanquished
A fixer
Happy
Trapped
Effected
A parent
Controlled
Nobody
Ruined
Beaten
Defeated
Normal
Rerouted
Unknown
Average
Wrecked
Careless
A brat packer
Left waiting
Left wanting
A drift (er)
Unstoppable
Nothing
Bored
A writer
Undiscovered
Broken
Unfulfilled
Left
Like this
Finished by now
Finished sooner
Crushed
Restrained
Comatose
I WOULD HAVE …
Gone off the rails
Gone off track
Told tails
Conformed
Held back
Said S’long
Had a novel idea
Fallen
Died inside
Died between the lines
Read between the lines
Only one view
Shared the views
Dumped the baggage
Left the baggage
Lost the point
Got straight to the point
Gone over the edge
Rescripted it
Rewritten it
Seen truth between the lines
Had only one view
Got in trouble
Told it differently
Made it up
Got off
Departed
Led a life of chai
Had shit to deal with
Had toxic problems
Walked the night alone
Woken with the sunrise
Lied with her
Embraced the gloom
Back tracked
Got better sleep
Made tracks
Put my foot in it
Covered more
Uncovered more
Lost the plot
Told the truth
Got to the point
Laughed
2 thoughts on “So what’s it called now?”
Looking forward to reading this though, I have to believe you are working on the audio book at this very moment.
All recorded, currently in post-production. Might be out before Christmas, my distributor has been taken over by Spotify so that may make the launch process quicker… or slower.