Many of my clients who have never written a book before, think they need to have a title for the book before the book has even begun to be written. They expend a lot of frustrated energy trying to get it “right.” I have not found this to be a helpful attitude.

My practice is to use a “working title” while the book is a work in progress, and throughout the writing process various titles will occur to me. Some will be good, others not-so-good. I have always trusted that the right title – the one that will grab potential readers and make them want to buy the book – will come to me. Sometimes it’s a felicitous phrase that will appear as if by magic on the screen. (Were those MY fingers?) Sometimes it will arise when I’m writing a synopsis of the book. Sometimes I’ll be talking to someone who knows nothing about the book, about a topic totally unrelated to the book, and she or he will say something that will spark an aha in me, and the title will be there. And sometimes I’ll tweak the working title until it begins to twinkle.

The one thing I don’t do is worry about the title. Instead I just trust.