Searchlights & Signal Flares 

How important are titles?

How do you handle your inner critic?

October-November 2005 

 

HOW IMPORTANT ARE TITLES?

Untitled—NO!

     While a few abstract painters have gotten away with titles like “Untitled #23” (often all blue or all black paintings), most paintings have titles like “Whistler's Mother” or “Starry Night” that at least provide a way to list them in the catalog.

     Most entertainers change their “titles” to make themselves more alluring. For example, Tony Bennett was born Anthony diBenedetto while his contemporary Tony Curtis was originally Bernard Schwartz. And most authors have the good sense to invent titles that might attract readers: Truman Capote called his bestseller In Cold Blood, not A Book about Some Murderers Combining Fact and Fiction.

     With all the blather and babble, the torrents of words spilling from every computer, a writer must be exceedingly clever and lure readers with intriguing titles: Sex and the City, not Four Single Women Devoting Every Waking Moment to Finding Mister Right...which tells us too much, or that weak, lazy title of every third-rate poem: “Memories.”

OR, HOW ABOUT THIS?

     You want a title? I'm far too busy admiring my splendid self to bother giving this extraordinary spattering of random thoughts and brilliant verbiage something as pedestrian as a conventional title. Or, for that matter, to offer a setting. If you cannot figure these things out for yourself, lowly reader, then slink back to your scullery.

                  Alexandra Lee,
                              Daughter of Anastasia,
                              the last of the Romanov princesses
                              a/k/a Arlene L. Mandell

Arlene L. Mandell recently adopted a shelter kitten whom she named “Gatsby.”  He's incredibly elegant and a bit of a scoundrel. (A perfect match, don't you think? Ed.)

 

How Important are Titles?

     I once heard Brenda Hillman give a craft lecture in which she described a title as a geographical site. I have never forgotten that. It made me review the titles of all of my poems, and change some of them. I now want the title to be something you can stand on. And something that stands by itself. The title has its own weather, which may be different but related to the body of the work. Sometimes the title is so important, that I start with only that and build. A book title, when it comes to me, tells me that the work is ready to be born, its completion, imminent.

Penelope La Montagne, Healdsburg,  

 

You Name It

     What's in a name? At this moment, I couldn't really tell you, but all I have to do is glance up at the spines of the books winking seductively from my library shelves: Play it as it Lays, Reading Water, In Cold Blood. I tend to go for the phrase as opposed to the single blip, and I never saw the real point of using the main character's name: Robinson Crusoe, Daisy Miller, Huckleberry Finn. I only know I'm supposed to care about them, but their titles don't draw me in. Funny how many of my favorite books are named after their tragic heroes: The Great Gatsby, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure. But I wouldn't go so far as to praise their titles. I had to be convinced to read Seabiscuit.

     I am sometimes tempted to go back through my old essay contest records to see some of the really terrible titles I've come across over the years. But I've been taught never to make fun of someone's name. It's too personal. Most of us just try to live with the mistakes parents make in these matters, and the same goes for a work of literature, be it essay, poem, or fiction. But we all know better than to type “Untitled” at the top of a poem, don't we? It would be like calling your baby “Who Knows?”

Susan Bono is still looking for the perfect title in Petaluma, CA.

 

     I think titles are very important. That's what gets my attention to start reading any material. Then, hopefully, the first sentence or paragraph hooks me.

     Re: Internal Critic. I just tell him that what I'm writing is the first draft and I know it is going to be awful, "Thank you very much. Get back in your corner and I'll let you know when I need your help." This generally works, since I'm a sporadic writer and my critic is usually hollering about some other aspect of my life.

 

James Scheller, mdscheller@earthlink.net                       

HOW DO YOU HANDLE YOUR INNER CRITIC?

     Ignore her.

Betty Winslow, in Bowling Green, Ohio, humming loudly to drown out her inner critic.

 

 

     My inner critic is probably the most enduring element of my personality. It survives jeers, indifference, strangulation—any defense I lob at it. My inner critic has the bounce-back quality I would prefer to have in my skin.

     My inner critic. If only I were as hard-bitten, cynical, demanding, and perfect. Oh, for the patience, the stamina, the vigilance, the high threshold for boredom. How I wish I were as able to stop cold with a mere arched eyebrow that nasty coworker, malicious relative, or insensitive stranger.

     My inner critic, a role model par excellence.

Jane Merryman gardens and hikes in and around Petaluma, California.

 

 

     How do I handle my Inner Critic? I listen to what she has to say, then I sit her down in a little pool of sunshine, give her a lollipop and a good book (someone else's), preferably with pictures. If her feedback makes even a lick of sense, I do a bit of re-writing. If she's just in a snotty mood, the lollipop thing usually works.    

 

Jo Lauer is a Sonoma County therapist who gets a kick out of writing. Her articles and essays have been published locally, nationally and internationally.

 

 

How do you handle your inner critic? 

     Her voice is neither harsh nor strident. She whispers, “Don't bother.  Don't worry.  This won't get you anywhere.” 

     In the years when getting somewhere was the engine that drove my days, her doubts were daunting. If I wasn¹t going to have my photo inside the cover of a book accompanied by a succinct, enticing biographic sketch, then she was right, “Why bother?” Even now at the end of a well-spent hour in my journal or my practice notebook, her whining can make me feel like the time was wasted. I could have cleaned the kitchen or gone for a walk, activities that would give me something to show for my efforts.  

     I turn on her and tell her that it doesn't matter if it doesn't matter. Making sense of myself, to myself, for myself is enough for me.  If every volume vanished, consumed by flames, if no word of mine was ever read again, even by me, I am satisfied with the doing, content with the pen in my hand, watching the words form on the page, feeling my life shift as I dig deep and discover the stories I have carried for so long.

Barbara Spicer, Tomales, CA.

 

     You ask me how I handle my inner critic. To begin, I must introduce her. Her name, Clementine, is also the name of the seedy variety of tangerines, not the sweet seedless type. She is filled with hard-to-swallow seeds. All my life, she has tempted me with negative messages. They have undermined my self-esteem and personal confidence. Today I'm in boot camp, jogging, climbing walls and crawling through verbal muck, still training to battle this ongoing adversary. She's nimble and so it's necessary for me to use CIA. I work to keep my creativity, insight and action finely tuned.

     Clementine chants: “You're too old to be relevant, too removed from publishing to be accepted, too shallow, too sensitive.”

     “Yes, yes,” I cry. “You're right.”

     The winner raises her clawed hands in the air, victorious again. I press the button and turn off the computer. I close my notebook and put away the pen.

     She's reminded me more than once that any publication accepting my work is not worth anyone's subscription. She's convinced me my forays into humor essays only skim surfaces, jet skis on oceans of philosophic possibilities. She has taught me to wear see-through skin. For example, one writing teacher I had stressed that any writer must, first and foremost, love what she is writing. My interpretation was that I should never again submit.

     Battles continue. So does my relationship with her. She tries sabotaging, insisting on tidiness in my writing corner and a weed-free garden. For too long, I listened to her barbs about my desk, my bookcases, my piles of paper. She tries guilt, reminding me that there are more writers in the world than readers and that a worthwhile project would be to volunteer to teach the non-readers of the world the value of written world. She tells me my world of words is excessive consumption.

     Finally, I boldly faced this seedy Clementine. She withered. Her bullets bounced. I've studied under excellent teachers, have attended writing conferences, and have developed friendships with other writers. Today, I facilitate a writers' workshop as part of the Sonoma County library curriculum. I've learned to stay strong. Part of my arsenal contains a notebook and pen. I keep those near me at all times. Now, I catch stray words and inspirations. I plant my own seeds of stories, poems, and essays. My writing is colored in primary colors and my critic has faded into shades of grey.

 

Charlene Bunas fights the good fight in Santa Rosa, CA.

 

How do you handle your inner critic?

     Remember the Patty Duke Show? How Patty, typical all-American girl, finds herself saddled with an identical cousin named Cathy from England? I don't remember much about the show except for a couple of lines from the theme song about how they “laugh alike, they walk alike, at times they even talk alike,” and the fact that Cathy was as demure and proper as Patty was gauche and impulsive. Are you wondering why I'm going on about this?

     It's because, like Patty and Cathy, my inner critic looks so much like me that even I get confused sometimes. You stand us side by side and you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference. A few of my closest friends who have spent time with us both claim that my inner critic has a slightly hardened gleam in her eye, and a laugh that sounds forced, as if she doesn't get the joke but is covering for it. But I'm not that astute, and when I think I'm hearing my own voice saying in a thoughtful tone, “You've run that idea into the ground,” or, “That's been done before,” or “You'll never get it to work,” well, I've been known to fall for it. Many times I will mistake hers for the voice of reason itself, and thank goodness I can stop now before I waste any more time on this garbage.

     Lately, I've taken action to remedy this difficult situation. “Any writing is better than no writing,” I tell myself, loudly enough for my inner critic to overhear. She might then try to convince me that putting out bad writing is like littering the landscape with fast food wrappers and cigarette butts, but we both know there's no real crime in it. I just keep repeating that mantra until she shuts up. And the other night while she was sleeping, (with one eye open—it's really creepy!) I stole into her office and used a Sharpie to draw a mustache on that sneering upper lip. Now I always know it's her when she shows up, looking like one of those old melodrama villains.

     Oddly enough, these crude defenses have fostered greater understanding between us. I've seen that my inner critic is really more like a frightened girl who is terrified no one will ever listen to her. She just hates being left out. So I allow her to come visit me on occasion, even help me with my writing. I say “help” but it's kind of like having a toddler help you make a cake. It adds more work, but is good for the relationship if everyone holds onto her sense of humor.

     “What you resist persists,” someone told me not long ago. It might have been my inner critic.

 

Susan Bono is making friends and influencing people in Petaluma, CA.