Finally, a title! Before it landed, my list of candidates grew to nearly 400. What seemed at the outset a simple exercise became the hardest to date.
Capturing the essence of 100,000 words within less than six words is not easy. A good title can draw more readers. Get it wrong and squander countless hours of writing, editing, and revising. And wonder what might have been.
So, what is it, you ask? First I'll share some near misses.
The working title for several years has been Escape from Hells Canyon. Hells Canyon is a place in my novel - and a metaphor. But the title isn't clear to people who don't know it's a place, an estimated two-thirds according to one poll. And, no, there's no apostrophe in Hells Canyon. Some readers consider the word hell offensive. Furthermore, the word Escape suggests someone or something is pursuing my protagonist. That's a stretch.
A variant of the working title was The Road through Hells Canyon, which was shortened to Beyond the Canyon. Some people I polled thought the book was a western. Although it is set in the western part of the United States, it's not a traditional western.
One Last Adventure seemed appealing to some, but it also felt like it had a spoiler in it or might be misleading.
Then came The Secret Escape of Stan Zelinski, which I shortened to The Secrets of Stan Zimmer. Some really liked it, including me, but it didn't seem to hit the genre spot on. Some thought it was a fantasy or young adult novel.
Heroes on the Open Road felt like it also had a spoiler, and it wasn't focused on the main story. The Escape That Wasn't became The Escape That Isn't before it was discarded. Ticket to Escape polled well, but again wasn't the right focus. Where to Turn intrigued some people, until I realized that, duh, men don't like to ask for directions - which came through unequivocally in the last poll. Signposts from Heaven felt too on-the-nose for most. I had the word eternity in several options, but people interpret eternity in different ways. Some think of it as heaven, which isn't the meaning here.
I also had several options that included the word hope, and they polled well. But they also felt cliche and tipped off the ending. Many titles too numerous to mention were eliminated because they were identical or similar to other creative works. Other fun ones were The Accidental Quest and Words from the Other Side, but people were confused about the genre.
That brought me to The Persistent Road and The Road Cries Out. The latter alludes to Luke 19:40 when Jesus responded to the Pharisees, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.” I really liked it but the former title polled stronger. So, I'm going with the people's choice: The Persistent Road. One person said it was poetic. To me, it just sounds like a novel.
The process of selecting a title produced in me more anxiety than I normally experience, which led to this month's reflection moments below. With the title selected and the copyedit completed, I'm happy that I can now move to the next stages: proofreading and design work.
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