Timing

This morning I'm going to see how long it takes me to write this blog post plus the scenes I've planned for my morning writing session, by using the Pomodoro timer on Marinanratimer.com. The timer gives me writing sessions of 25 minutes with 5 minute breaks, and (if I remember correctly) a 15-minute break after I finish four sessions. I can also pause it if I need to do something that won't wait until my break, like answer the phone or the call of Nature.

Why time myself? It's been a while since I have, and I need to know (on average) how much writing I can do in a day, a week and a month to better plan my work schedule. For example: I wrote a total of 6,159 words of fiction and a 563-word blog post on Monday, and that's a pretty typical writing day for me. But I didn't keep track of my time writing, so I can't tell you exactly how long it took me to write it. Maybe ten hours, maybe twelve -- I'm really not sure. I had some productive sprints, during which I can write up to 1,500 words an hour, but also had more than one draggy sessions where I likely only knocked out 500 words. There was also an hour where I edited everything I'd written.

Right now I'm at the halfway point of my 25 minute session, and I've written 238 words. That's close to twenty words a minute, which puts me at 1,200 words per hour -- a little faster than I usually write, but blog posts are easy -- I just write off the top of my head and add coding for applicable links. Could I write faster? Sure. But it's not really about speed, it's about consistency. I like to get into a productive rhythm with the writing where I feel comfortable + I'm getting work done at an acceptable pace. Once I know how long that takes me, I can forecast the work I'll probably get done and alter my schedule accordingly.

In November I'll be working on two novels, one for NaNoWriMo and one for work. I already know I need to write a minimum of 5K per day. I'll probably do more so I can take off on Thanksgiving. But having timed myself, I'll also know how long I have to block off every day for writing. It's not perfect -- I'll write slower when I feel like crap, and faster when I get into the zone, but those highs and lows tend to balance out for me.

One neat thing about this timer site is that the tab for it shows you the time if you're working in multiple windows. Right now I have three minutes left before my break. I also just deleted a long sentence that made no sense, so I'm not padding my results -- just the opposite. This exercise is not about how much you can do in 25 minutes, but what you'd actually write on any day -- and on any day I do delete about 5% of what I write while I'm writing it.

Thirty seconds: I'm feeling a little more awake now, and a little more focused. Timers do that for me, too. And now I've reached my five minute break (announced by a handy little chime.)

Total: 562 words in twenty-five minutes.

I think I'll use my break to make a cup of tea and get the laundry started. Also, just to note, there are two other timers on the site you can use; one is customizable, and the other is just like a kitchen timer -- set it and forget it.

Free NaNoWriMo Resources

I got an SPAMish e-mail from the National Novel Writing Month folks offering me a discount on an online writing class with some university where Joss Whedon evidently went to school. All due respect to higher education and all, but I am perplexed by this (Mr. Whedon writes novels?) That's what I get for subscribing to their newsletter, I suppose.

I don't think you should have to pay anyone to learn how to write novels (disclaimer: I never did.) The reason I started PBW was to share what I know and learn about writing with others who are self-taught like me, and/or who can't afford to pay for education. So here are free writing resources from the PBW archives for anyone who wants to prep for NaNoWriMo:

Characters: You can get a mini crash-course in how to craft characters in my post about stand-out characters here, and a fun way to create character references by using my Character Trading Cards idea.

Outlining: Check out this post for everything you ever wanted to know about novel outlining, including a link to my Novel Outlining 101, the most popular post of all time at PBW.

Plot: Plotting with Purpose is an online workshop I did ten years ago that still holds true to everything I do today.

Setting: My workshop post Food and Fire gives some insight as to how I work (and often struggle with) writing settings.

Style: I even did a virtual workshop on writing style here.

If you do a keyword search here at PBW you'll likely find a post about almost anything to do with novel writing, too, and with workshops I usually include links to other authors' opinions on the topics. You can also use keywords and research 40K articles on writing over at Hiveword's Writer's Knowledge Base.

I'm also in for writing a novel in November, and once the NaNoWriMo site opens for the 2017 challenge I'll see what group options there are so those who want to join me can congregate together all during those crazy thirty days. Stay tuned for more details as we get closer to the kick-off on November 1st.

Thumb Rules

I'm not a fan of rules, but I do enjoy the folksy alternatives, such as rules of thumb. These are advice, estimates or predictions based on experience or opinion, such as "When the ink on a fountain pen flows more liberally than usual you are likely to have a storm" or "If it rains all summer here we'll have at least two freezes during winter" (one of mine). Rules of thumb range from utterly ridiculous (If you don't want a cat to jump into your lap, don't make eye contact with it) to totally accurate (Cook fish ten minutes per inch of thickness.)

You can imagine how entertained I was when I discovered there's a searchable web site devoted to rules of thumb on just about every subject you can imagine. You simply enter any topical word into the search box, and the site will offer you all the thumby wisdom it has on the subject.

Here are a few zingers about writing:

"If you feel that you need a thesaurus to write something, you are probably trying too hard."

--John Shed, language instructor

"Always figure out who your characters are before you figure out your plot. You can follow a good character through a bad plot, but you can't make a good plot out of a bad character."

--James Erwin, Editor, Des Moines, IA, USA

"If the erasers of your pencils wear out before the graphite, you're too fussy."

--Stephen Unsino, poet, Eastchester, New York

(Thanks to Gerard over at the Presurfer, who led me to the Rules of Thumb site via this helpful post.)

Write Noise

Some people have a tough time doing certain things (working out, writing, sleeping,) in complete silence. While I prefer to write in silence, I find rain sounds (especially with thunder) knock me out better than any sleep aid, and I tend to sew better if I'm listening to the some ambient bird or garden sounds.

If you're looking for the same, here are some links for you:

Ambient-Mixer.com not only has a ton of ambient soundtracks for you to listen to, it also allows you to mix your own.

Calm Sound offers a nice variety of nature sounds along with accompanying videos; the relaxing mix is my favorite.

For when you can't get outdoors, here are 11 hours of sounds from an English garden.

Fresh daily rain sounds site Rainy Mood claims rain makes everything better. I think they're absolutely right.

Simply Noise offers three types of ambient sound -- white, pink and brown (I love the brown, actually.) They also explain why they labeled the sounds with colors.

Soundrown.com offers ten ambient sounds for you to listen to (and you can combine them by enabling more than one.)

This Youtube fireplace video allows you to watch as well as listen to the flames.

Waterfalls are natural white-noise generators; here's a Youttube video with fourteen minutes of waterfall sounds.

Because Sometimes You Need a Prompt

Sorry I'm late posting again today. My life got temporarily derailed, but I'm now back on track, all's well etc.

A few nights back I was doing one of my random searches for online writing inspiration when I found this article by Jenny Yang on ten resources to help break writer's block. Most of them I've already seen, linked to or keep bookmarked, except for one: Plinky. Here's how the site defines itself:

Plinky makes it easy for you to create inspired content. Every day we provide a prompt (i.e. a question or challenge) and you answer. We make it simple to add rich media and share your answers on Facebook, Twitter and blogs.

They don't support Blogger, so I can't comment on how simple it is to share Plinky content on blogs, but those of you who are hooked up to Facebook and Twitter are evidently covered. I looked through the prompt archive, and here's a sampling of what they've posted as challenges for the last three days:

Prompted May 28, 2013: Tell us about the most surprising helping hand you’ve ever received.

Prompted May 27, 2013: Write down the first sight, sound, smell, and sensation you experienced on waking up today. Pick the one you’re most drawn to, and write. (For a bigger challenge, pick the one you’re least drawn to.)

Prompted May 26, 2013: Tell us about something you would attempt if you were guaranteed not to fail (and tell us why you haven’t tried it yet).

These seem like interesting topics for blogging, writing practice and/or personal journaling, and if you wanted to apply them to your fiction you might have a character answer them for you. You can also learn a lot about people by reading the answers that have been posted online by others. Speaking of that, if you don't want to share your thoughts online with others, you can visit the site to pick up the prompt of the day and simply keep your answer to yourself, so in that sense Plinky can work for anyone.

750 Words

750words.com is an online writing site that challenges the user to write 750 words per day. You register to create an account, which then takes you to a page where you simply write. Everything you write on 750words is counted and saved, and when you reach your daily goal you're awarded two points and an X in that day's box. Here's a screen shot of one day's page from my account:



There are obvious benefits to joining 750words.com and using the site to get some writing done. First you have a place to work that has no distractions, bells, whistles, etc. -- it's basically just a blank, private page where you can work. The only goal is to write 750 words in one day, and earning your points for accomplishing that goal can be an excellent motivator. You can also leave and come back to it without having to start up a program or open files; you can log off or minimize the window, do some other online work and then go back to it. The site is an excellent way to get into a daily writing routine, whether you make goal or not.

Here's another screenshot that shows the counter at the bottom of the page:



You can print whatever you write on 750words.com, and since it's saved online you can either leave it on your account or copy it to a file on your hard drive (I did this by highlighting, copying the text and pasting it in Word.) Writers who collaborate can easily share an account and use it to pass their day's writing back and forth; all you have to do is coordinate when either of you will log on. This is also a nice site to use for online writing challenges like word wars or group daily goal drives with other writer pals.

At present registering for an account is free (donations are much appreciated), but that will be changing shortly:

On May 1st, all existing users of the site will be given lifetime free accounts (we hope you'll continue to donate when you can). New accounts created after May 1st, 2013 will be required to become members within 30 days after signing up in order to keep writing. Everyone will always have access to previous writings, stats, etc, even if they choose not to become members.

The site owners do note that after May 1st they will be giving out free accounts monthly, and are always willing to hear from someone who might not be able to afford the new usage fee and possibly give them a free account on a case by case basis. In the meantime, you still have a week to snag a free account, so if you're interested do check it out soon.

Hiveword

Recently while I was poking around the Writers Knowledge Base site, I discovered Mike Fleming's Hiveword, an amazing web-based story organizer that is easy to use, provides quick and easy outlining of scenes, characters, settings and plotlines, and generates terrific compilation lists of the same. In addition to these features Hiveword also stores your work online for you in a private account, so it's like a virtual version of a novel notebook. Here are details on some of Hiveword's different features along with some screenshots (and click on any image to see a larger version):



Your Hiveword account includes a dashboard with all your works in progress arranged by title, along with when they were created, stats on how much work you've done on them, and the last time you updated the info.  For those of you who like me are quantum writers and work on several projects at the same time, this can help you track your progress and productivity on multiple WIPs.



Each story you archive on Hiveword has a main title page where you can record a subtitle, what name you're writing under, and a summary of the story.  Here I've plugged in the summary for my novel crash dummies' book, and the summary area is a great place to work on a draft of your outline or synopsis.



As you compile scenes on Hiveword, it keeps track of them, and generates a list of them for each project.  This is great because you can track how often you switch settings, POV, plotlines and keep track of who appears in what scene.



Hiveword also compiles lists of your characters as you make them up and provides an at-a-glance summary of things like attributes, occupations, motivations, etc.  If you're working on a project with a big cast of characters I don't have to tell you how valuable this is.



The service also compiles lists of settings in the story, as well as a snapshot of your description of them.



There's a button on the settings list page that offers you the option to you generate place names if you need them, and provides maps and links to info about the generated results.  By selecting the "add setting" button you can add any of the results you like directly into your story.



You can also use a similar button to generate random character names, and add those you like from the results to your story.

There is much more to Hiveword than what I've mentioned, so it's worth taking it for a test-drive yourself to see all the features.  Hiveword is so great at helping organize your story info and elements that it's like having your own personal story assistant.  You can use it for other purposes as well, such as outlining those bright, shiny and very distracting new story ideas so you can get out of your head.  For those of you who are series writers, Hiveword would serve as an excellent encyclopedia to keep a running record of your characters, settings, plots and details from every novel.  If you're on the phone with an editor, you can consult Hiveword on details from your book for pitches, editorial discussions or to answer those pesky impromptu questions (like "Hey, what Chapter did Marcia find out John was also the demon thief?")  You pantsers might not have to backtrack through your manuscripts as much if you take a few minutes after your work sessions to record details of what you've already written in a Hiveword file.

The very best thing about Hiveword is that right now it's free* for anyone to use, so you don't have to pay to play with it (and according to Mike Fleming's blog, he's keeping it free for National Novel Writing Month.)  If you're thinking about writing your first novel this November, want to become more organized with ongoing projects, or simply want to play with novel-writing software to see what it can do for you, I highly recommend Hiveword.

*Added: I just learned from the designer that Hiveword is going to be free forever, not just for NaNoWriMo, so one more huge reason to love it.

Quilt or Innocence

Back in March I mentioned discovering The Writer's Knowledge Base, author Elizabeth S. Craig's site that provides among many neat things a search engine specifically geared toward writers. They also put out a free monthly newsletter, for which they kindly interviewed me in April as their featured blogger.

Since then I've been shamelessly rifling through the links on the site, and while reading Elizabeth's blog post Covering Our Bases I noticed her June release had quilts in the art and one in the title: Quilt or Innocence. Fiction featuring quilts is pretty rare to begin with, but this one is the first novel in a mystery series set in the North Carolina mountains, and features a retired art museum curator turned amateur sleuth.

Here's some copy on the book from the author's web site:

As the newest member of the Village Quilters Guild, Beatrice has a lot of gossip to catch up on—especially with the Patchwork Cottage quilt shop about to close. It seems that Judith, the landlord everyone loves to hate, wants to raise the rent, despite being a quilter herself…

But when Judith is found dead, the harmless gossip becomes an intricate patchwork of mischievous motives. And it’s up to Beatrice’s expert eye to decipher the pattern and catch the killer, before her life gets sewn up for good.

The quilt-themed books I encounter are generally of the memoir, angsty Amish or bestest-girlfriend/lafemmance variety, so I was happy to order a copy from B&N. Buying it also gives me an opportunity to show my support for an author who provides free resources for writers on the internet, aka practicing what I preach.

What authors have you discovered via their support for their peers? Let us know in comments.

Body Double & BAM Haul

I was reading an article about how we see our own body size that included a link to My Body Gallery, a site that shows photos of real women's bodies (not nude or lascivious in any way, just real-life gals.) The cool thing about it is that you can search the photos by height, weight, pant size, shirt size and body type (pear, banana, apple or hourglass) in order to find photos of women with a matching body type. This could be helpful when you're writing a female character whose physical stats don't match your own or anyone you know. With this site you can get a good look at real women who are a body double of your character, which will help you write more accurate, realistic descriptions.

Now if they only had one for real men . . . .

Yesterday I cured a minor case of the blues by making a run to BAM and finding a half-dozen books I wanted: two books as gifts for friends (which I'm not naming or showing you because both read the blog and they're just going to have to wait until the party), and four new releases for me: Mary Balogh's The Proposal, Gail Carriger's Timeless, Sofie Kelly's Copycat Killing and Shiloh Walker's Hunter's Rise. Should keep me curled up and happy through the weekend, which proves there is no better way to shop for prezzies and shake off doldrums at the same time than a visit to the bookstore.

Have you guys picked up any new releases you've been impatiently waiting on? Share some titles in comments.

Playing with Polyvore

Artist Sheree Burlington has an article in the Spring 2012 issue of Somerset Digital Studio magazine that practically called my name: Designing with Polyvore: Learning to color outside of the lines.

According the Sheree's article, Polyvore is a fashion shopping site that has been gradually inhabited by all sorts of artistic subcultures, thanks to their online editing tool that she and many others use to create collages using keywords to bring up online images.

At first I was a bit dubious -- I'm about as fashionable as the Amish, and shopping sites are usually very limited as to what they can offer the average writer -- but after glancing through the article and reading about how much Sheree had done with it I decided to go and see what I could do.

I was interested in building some character collages, so I familiarized myself with the easy to use, drag-and-drop editing tool, and within a few minutes I put together this collage using random images and a provided template (these are simply screenshots):



I also built this one:



I decided to forget about the templates and just start stacking images, which produced this:



And this:



I did only the most rudimentary keyword searches and simple resizing of the images I dragged and dropped into the editor; you tech-savvy writers out there will likely be able to do a lot more with it. The images are pulled from various sources on the internet (and links to the originals are provided with each image) so if you decide to play with Polyvore's editor I'd advise you employ it only for personal use to avoid copyright issues.

More Big Huge Labs Stuff

I've been back over at Big Huge Labs looking for some ideas, this time for an art project. I wanted to frame some of my own photos in interesting ways, and decided to try out their Framer generator.

The Framer offers these options to frame any image file you upload:

USA Stamp ~ USA Stamp, no postmark ~ Canadian Stamp ~ Canadian stamp, no postmark ~ Stamp border ~ Stamp border, no postmark ~ Canvas Panels ~ Canvas Panels (portrait) ~ To-do List ~ Autumn Leaves ~ Film ~ Holga 35mm ~ Holga 35mm (portrait) ~ Frosted glass ~ Frosted Glass (portrait) ~ Wood Frame ~ Reflection ~ Polaroid ~ Brushed edge ~ Brushed edge (portrait)Bulletin Board ~ ColorCraft Bonus Photo

It's very simple to use this generator; you just upload your photo, choose a frame style, select the position of your image within the frame, set the background color, choose a date (for the postmark frames) and add a photo credit if desired. Once you click on create, the generator does the rest. Here are some of the framed images I did in a few seconds:

Postage Stamp with Postmark Frame:



Frosted Glass Edge Frame:



Traditional Wood Frame:



Brushed Edge Frame:



They also offer one option that produces a nice organizational helper:

To-Do List:



For those of you who are making your own covers or promo items, this might be a useful online tool to bookmark.

Wordle Scribing

Whenever I want to creatively juggle words and phrases I go straight to my favorite online toy, Wordle, which creates word clouds out of any text or URL you feed to it. Among other things I regularly use it to coin words, create story titles, and play with character profiles.

This time I went to Wordle with a less well-defined task on hand: pulling together some concept sketches. For me concepts often begin as simply a handful of words, images or feelings I want to stir together and see how they blend. Wordle helps with the stirring and the mixing.

I decided to tackle defining the concepts better by taking four defining/descriptive keywords, pulling a bunch of synonyms for them from the thesaurus and feeding the entire pile to Wordle to see what it made of them. If nothing else I figured I might get a few title ideas out of the exercise (and click on any of the following images to get a bigger view of the cloud.)

Concept #1: green, evening, ghost, sorrow



Several phrases overlapped and ended up being repeated, and as I read them I could see some new connections I hadn't made. Wordle's pairings of Winter demon, sunset vision and witching night also helped me further refine the concept. This cloud definitely sent me in the right direction.

Concept #2: desire, steal, time, secret



Not many phrases overlapped in this cloud, and at first glance it seemed, well, overly wordy. But once I gave it a few minutes I began focusing on individual words that seemed to jump out at me: underground, ransom, thieve, clouded, hunger and longing. Together they gave me the protagonist, who will be the hub of this concept.

Concept #3: heart, jewel, bright, fire



Again, not a lot of overlap, but probably the best results of all three attempts. Inspired by great pairings like white luster, twinkling cross, burning charm and individual words like solitaire, aglow and incandescent I found my plot and both protagonists as well as one possible setting.

If you want to try this method for your story concept, my advice is to use descriptive words that relate in some way to your story rather than stringently define it. Think mood instead of details. It also helps to employ keywords that are synonym-friendly, and do use plenty of synonyms, as the more you feed to Wordle, the more diversity you'll get in return.

Online Writing Ten

Deadline week starts today for me (as well as all you NaNoWriMo'ers out there), so to help you get some writing done while you're online, here are:

Ten Things for the Online Writing

The Bonsai Story Generator takes the text you cut and paste, turns it inside out and upside down, and gives you some new word combos, lines and all kinds of ideas.

The Cut Up Machine over at Language is a Virus takes whatever text you feed it, chops it up, rearranges it and generates new text.

Google Docs allows you to create and edit documents online with their simple word processor; if you're looking for online storage they offer free and low-cost accounts as well (I use and personally recommend this one.)

iNetword is going bye-bye in March 2012, but until then you can use it online for free.

Also at Language is a Virus, the Sentence Builder can give you a hand with line construction.

SpringNote is a free online notebook based on wiki.

Think Free Online Office provides 1 GB of free storage along with online document viewing, editing and collaboration.

Write 100 words at Written? Kitten and an adorable kitten pic pops up as your reward.

Zoho Writer is "an online word processor that allows you to create and share documents online. You need not install any software in your desktop, all you need is just a browser and an internet connection for working with Zoho Writer."

Zoho also has a virtual notebook in beta here.

Test Your Vocab

Ever wonder what size English vocabulary you have? Here's a test you can take online to give you an estimate.

I took the test and gave honest responses (it's honor system based, so you can lie and say you know the tough words and probably make yourself look better.) I thought I'd absolutely bomb, especially when I hit the final column, but my results surprised me:



Test link nicked from Gerard over at The Presurfer.

Playing with Titles

A rose by any other name is still a rose. This is because it's a flower, not a book. A book by any other name is one that has a title. Preferably something wonderful. That I spent a couple days/weeks/months thinking about. Because it's a book, not a rose.

I have met writers who say they never obsess the way I do over titles for their stories. According to them, a title is something they throw together in a few minutes, like salad out of a bag. They claim they're never rattled when a publisher tells them their title won't work. And when their editor suggests a replacement title, they're also fine with having that slapped on their book.

To me these writers are very bizarre people, and I don't entirely trust them.

I admit, I am deeply, madly, totally obsessed with story titles, and we have a very rocky love-hate relationship: I love them, and I hate them. When I hit on a great title I feel like I've conquered a small country. When I talk about it, I sound like Tom Hanks crowing over the first fire he builds in the movie Castaway: Look! I made title! When for whatever reason I get stuck, well, this is why God created the internet, writer friends and hot fudge sundaes.

I'd say 99.9% of the time I decide on a title before I write a single word of the story. The other .01% of the time I make up a decent working title I can live with while I write the story (and think about, make lists of and otherwise obsess over better titles every day until it's finished.) Which I'm sure makes me seem quite bizarre, because from the articles I've read on the subject it seems a lot of writers wait until they finish writing the story before they try to title it. I'd have a nervous breakdown if someone made me do that.

Also, something I should mention because there is always some confusion on this issue: titles cannot be copyrighted, so you never own any title you come up unless you trademark it (read about the details and the law at the government's copyright site here.)

For series writers like me, titles can become a big problem, especially now that most publishers want series books to carry brand-friendly titles. These are interrelated or matchy-matchy type titles that all sound basically the same. For those of us who prefer the creative and original, this is also known as title torture. I've seen one author whose titles are so matchy-matchy they have become literally indistinguishable from each other, something you never want to have happen to your books (and trust me, neither do your poor readers.)

It's always good to have options when you title a story so that you're not fixated on one name, as editors and publishers can and will demand you retitle something to be -- and I'll quote here -- "more marketable." When you think of a title, you might start a list of other titles you can live with if your first gets stomped (this will also keep your editor from suggesting his/her own ideas, which is when you run the biggest risk of getting stuck with an awful title.) Keep adding to your alternative list as you get new ideas as well; I've had editors who have gone through up to thirty ideas I've presented before finally settling on one they liked.

If you're a genre writer, some publishers may press you to have a genre-appropriate sounding title, too. Taking Jezebel was my original title for the first book in my Kyndred series (and I had put together a series proposal with five more just like it) but it didn't sound "paranormal enough" for the publisher, so I had to come up with other options. I went with coining compound word titles that described the Kyndred's abilities (Shadowlight, Dreamveil, Frostfire, Nightshine) which allowed me to retain the original/creative qualities I preferred while giving the publisher what they wanted.

A dazzling title (or series of titles) can be a great selling point, and during the submission stage often will snag the interest of an agent or an editor. You've got to have the quality of work to back it up, but a riveting title broadcasts your creative talent almost like a hot novel premise. On the other hand, nothing says dull and boring than an unimaginative title, or one you've "borrowed" from another writer's work.

Series titles in particular have the most firepower to evolve into a unique brand on the market, which helps create a niche for your work. If you have a forgettable or difficult-to-spell name, or you write in multiple genres under a variety of pseudonyms (I have both problems) a series title can brand your work in the minds of readers.

I always try to have fun with creating titles as it is such a stressful task. Fortunately the internet is a great place to work on them because of all the instant-access resources you can use. Here are some methods and places I recommend:

Finding the keywords: OneLook Reverse Dictionary allows you to input a multi-word concept and returns a list of words it finds related to the concept. This is especially helpful if you have an idea or concept but are running short on keywords.

Poem fragments: I put keywords related to my novel concept or theme into the verse search engine over at Bartleby.com and read what poems contain my keywords. Often a fragment of poetry makes a great title.

Practical fun: Online story title generators (like this one, this one and this one) are mainly for fun, but sometimes they can give your imagination a nudge as well.

Text, reimagined: The Bonsai Story Generator takes whatever text you cut and paste into it and rearranges the words and phrases from it into different pseudo-poetic line constructs. Most of the time the results are a little strange but also very interesting and (for me, anyway) often inspirational.

Wordle It: I came up with a way to use Wordle (my favorite online toy) to generate among other things title ideas from word clouds; read about it on PBW here.

Related Links:

John Floyd's article Choosing the Right Name for Your Story offers some neat ideas on how to construct your title.

I don't think anyone can tell you if you have an instant bestseller based on your title alone, but Lulu.com has a cute online toy that tries to here.