First, a friendly PSA: There is a nasty strain of strep going around, which is resistant to some antibiotics. ASK ME HOW I KNOW. Also, I never, ever had a sore throat with it; I just thought I had a bad cold that wasn’t going away, and I didn’t seek medical attention until it had spread to my eyes. (Yes, that is a thing. A gross thing.) So if you’re feeling a bit under the weather and it doesn’t seem to be getting better, go to the doctor! Don’t be like me!
So now that I’m finally feeling better after about a month of feeling like I got hit by a truck, it’s time to get back to writing and blogging. In my last post, I wrote about how I was ready to start my new project, even though not all of the details were set in stone. Among those details was the title. As I said, I’ve started writing before without a title in place and it all worked out, so this shouldn’t have been a big deal, right?
Hahaha nope. It was gnawing at me. Keeping me awake at night (when I really should have been sleeping, considering how sick I was and I still had two infants to care for). Somewhere, there was perfect title, and I was determined to think of it, even if it killed me before the untreated strep did. When I thought of something I considered pretty good, I turned to Google.
And since there’s nothing new under the sun, that title had been used for other works already. Specifically, a non-fiction book that came out a few years ago, a play, and a dystopian series whose third installment comes out this month. Well, boo.
I don’t know why it bugged me so much. I mean, these days, it’s probably extremely difficult to find a title that hasn’t been used for anything before. Goodness knows there were plenty of works of fiction called Elysium before mine came out. Same with Disintegration. And when I did have books come out that had unique titles, it’s not like they suddenly propelled me into superstardom and made me a world famous author. (Unfortunately.)
Cue more sleepless nights and a lack of motivation. I created a folder so I could store some research I’d done, and gave it a silly name just to have something in place. I eventually made THE document for the actual manuscript and gave it the same placeholder file name. And I even got started and knocked out a few paragraphs.
Finally, I decided that the lack of originality isn’t going to hold me back. What I came up with is the title for this book, and I’m not going to fight it anymore. I like the sound of it, it fits the storyline, and I’m just going to go with my gut feeling and accept it. To commemorate this decision, I’m even going to make a tag for it here. (Because that makes it official!)
So, welcome to my new writing project: Out of Orbit