I am at an interesting place in the book I have been writing for the past two years. All the pieces are edited and ready, so it is a case of ordering them and looking at book titles. It’s an unusual book, a kind of single author anthology of poetry, stories, essays and memoir, mostly on the theme of being second-generation Irish. It’s had two working titles: The Portable McCarthy and Searching for Something Lost. I have been amusing and tormenting myself by coming up with alternatives. Subtitles are the most difficult things; how do you encapsulate a book in a few words? 
I sent some book title suggestions out to some of my readers and fellow/sister writers, and not one has agreed on the same title as another. One person has suggested I wait until I have given the whole manuscript to a reader, and a title may arise from that exercise. A lot of it is procrastination, of course. Instead of getting on with work required, I am fart-arsing about with titles. Maybe that’s it! Fart-arsing about would make a great title.
For my two books and poetry pamphlets, the titles have come from poems or story titles. strange fruits was chosen in a session with Maggie Drury, who was designing the image for the book cover. It was a title she felt she could work with, graphically. As Long as it Takes was my own choice. The stories in the book took five years to write, and a couple more years to edit. I wondered if I’d ever finish it. I then decided that it would take as long as it takes, which reflected the title of one of the stories, ‘As Long as it Takes’. The narrator is going home to Ireland to see her dying mother:
Bill saw me as far as the ticket barrier at Euston. ‘I don’t know when I’ll be back,’ I said, picking a stray thread from the lapel of his jacket. ‘You know how it is. A dying woman takes as long as she takes.’
So does a book.
The book I am working on has been interrupted by tragedy (the violent death of an uncle), the triggering of old trauma during the writing and research, the unexpected death of my older brother, my husband having two heart attacks, a year apart, and my younger daughter’s treatment for breast cancer. But some things must be written, must be finished and put out into the world. This is my third attempt at writing a new book in four years. Maybe it’s third time lucky.
With two abandonned book drafts, there is much material that hasn’t found its place. I have started a Substack newsletter to publish some of these pieces. Having left Twitter/X last year, and Facebook a few months ago, I have been trying to find my online tribe. Substack is packed with good writers. I am reluctant to spend too much time ‘building my audience’, but I am steadily acquiring subscribers. I have decided to keep my content free. So if you want to head on over to Substack and subscribe, you can find me here.
Other Substacks I subscribe to are George Saunders Story Club, Local Authority and Writing a Better World with Ros Barber.
