The [name]'s the thing.

What's in a name? that which we call a rose 

By any other name would smell as sweet;

Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene 2
Shakespeare

I'm horrible at naming things.  I'm beginning to embrace this fact and move on with my life, leaving a trail of terrible names in my wake.

I named my dog after a cute kid in a television show I liked at the time.  His name also happens to be the name of a book.

Poor kid has had to live with a bad name all these years.  He's grown accustomed to it.  Other people pretend to not mind calling him by the name, but I can tell that sits on their tongues like the bitter part of a Sour Patch Kid.

Sour Patch Kids, get all of the joys of tooth decay without any of the benefits of flavor.

There are people who give things names and are very good at it.  I have a friend who named a blog based on a stupid thing I said once.  Made a great name because she's very good at naming things.  It stuck, was very memorable.

Introduction to marketing, kids.  Pick a name and make it memorable.  If you pick a good name, your job is a lot easier.  People want to remember the name of your thing.  Play into that desire.

No one wants to look you in the eye and wonder, "what was the name of that thing, again?  Rolls off of the memory like water off a duck's back."

So far, I've written (at least the revised drafts of) three novels.  I've started a fourth and the working title for it is TERRIBLE.  I'm not going to share it here because, and I have this nightmare constantly, the working title may become the manuscript title.  Well, then I'm screwed because the working title is bad.  Every book I've written has had a working title that, at the end of the day, changed in some way.

Not that the titles are all that great.   They're just better than the working titles.

My first book is currently called The Black Fountain.  It had some fairly heinous working titles.  Three of them.  Each one only incrementally better than the previous one.  One of them, and I'm not proud of this, was a spoiler for what happens in the book.

Seriously.  I spoiled the book in the title.

The Black Fountain works for now, but I'd bet that there's a better title for it out there.  It's the first book of a series and I'm sure there's a tie-in to the other books that will work better.

Holy shit, the series title.  The name of the series is a practice in how to not name a series of books.  I tried to be clever, tried to be serious, tried to be funny, tried to be mysterious.  None of it worked.  The working titles for the series were worse than the working titles for the first book.

One of them was song lyrics.  Of a song that I wrote.

I'll give you a few moments to finish laughing.

The name of the series, for better or worse, is now The Rosepetal Codex.  It's not the worst name I've come up with.  We'll see if it sticks.

So, I'll keep trying my hand at this naming thing, hoping I get better with practice.  Like writing.  Just gotta put in the work.  One day, before I've realized it, I'll have come up with names that I'd at least be proud to put on a t-shirt.

Or maybe a coffee mug.