The Titular Border War
I’m not good at titles. My agent titled
GODS IN ALABAMA. Its working title was GONE TO BONES, but
while I was in the middle of drafting it, THE LOVELY BONES
came out, and that was that.
So I was deeply proud when I came up with working title for
the book that eventually became BETWEEN, GEORGIA. I still
like the original title better. I called it THE REFRIGERATOR
BORDER WARS. It’s the sort of title that would
make me pause in a bookstore and at least read a couple of
sentences. But eventually, in the course of writing and rewriting,
the title stopped making sense
The titular border war originally began when Minor Character
#7 went into a spooky junkyard and was chased by dogs into
an old fridge. She subsequently smothered.
In the course of writing the book, I realized several things:
1) There was no rational way to get that particular character
into the junkyard in the first place. I know this woman. She
would not go. I would have had to send a big wind to pick
her up and hurl her over the fence.
2) I realized she wasn’t actually Minor Character #7.
She was Genny, one of my narrator’s many mothers, and
I would need her for the rest of the book.
3) The way gentle little Genny chose to smother was very dull.
Mostly she sat in the fridge and wondered how much oxygen
she had left.
I cut out the entire chapter and started over. If I
couldn’t get Genny to the junkyard, I would let the
junkyard dogs come to Genny, escaping and running her down
like vicious toothy mountains. I had a much stronger book,
but my beloved title had been rendered obsolete.
I tried to work in other refrigerators, but it was a no go.
I had to wade through and de-fridgify in one great scything
revision. It was one of the last things I did before sending
the MS to my agent and asking him to please find a title.
I think I cut out a good three thousand words in that pass-through,
all of which were trying very hard to make refrigerators seem
scary, or awe-inspiring, or lovable, or, in one particularly
ill-conceived passage, like a manifestation of hope. The fridge
that sprang eternal.
The new title works for the book and I like it, but I do miss
the original. Hopefully I can use that title for something
else, just as soon a thematically vital refrigerator presents
itself in a book that has a war in it and takes place near
some kind of border...
Or not. *sigh*
