Working titles

Finding the right words to get people to read a bunch of other words

An Italo Calvino line from Sara Bader’s book of quotations, Every Day A Word Surprises Me

Hey y’all,

Let me begin by saying I am no expert on the subject of titles and can use all the help I can get, so if you have advice for us or things that work for you when coming up with titles for your work, please drop them in the comments:

In My Life in France, Julia Child wrote about what a pain it was to come up with the title for Mastering The Art of French Cooking. She and her husband Paul debated “the merits of poetic titles versus descriptive titles.” They made lists and lists of titles, trying to come up with the right “combination of words and associations” that would work.

Editor Judith Jones (who got the original manuscript with the title French Recipes for American Cooks) finally came up with the title after “playing with a set of words like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, trying to get them to fit together.”

This was dramatized in the movie Julie & Julia with index cards and push pins:

There’s a good deal more about how the book came together in Sara B. Franklin’s new book about Judith Jones, The Editor: How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America:

“In the fall of 1960, they spent weeks exchanging new title ideas for the book. Child sent Judith a long, typed list of suggestions, with “Mastering the Art of French Cuisine/Cooking/Cookery” scribbled at the end. “We have all liked the idea of playing around with the word ‘master’ or ‘mastery,’ ” Judith reported on behalf of Knopf. “But I told you the objection to the idea of ‘the mastery of.’ However, I think we have now found the solution by calling it: ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking.’ ‘Mastering’ becomes an active verb now and it gives us everything we need to work with in terms of copy…”

Still, even if you come up with a great title, there will be unbelievers. Alfred Knopf, when he heard Jones’ title, supposedly shook his head and said, “I’ll eat my hat if anyone buys a book with that title!”