Play the game, below, to find a title for your memoir.
I knew the title of my first memoir, My Beautiful Psychosis, before I started writing it. I didn’t even have to think of one because it just came to me and stuck. It contained the word ‘psychosis’ which is especially useful for improving SEO. It also surprises people with the juxtaposition of the word ‘beautiful’ with ‘psychosis’. Plus the ‘my’ made it obviously a memoir. It ticked all the boxes.
I went against the advice of the editor, who suggested a more literary sounding title. If I’d done that, it would have The Call of the Rooster.
My second book has been harder to figure out. The first few ideas didn’t work. A Very Small Medium was a clever play on words but it didn’t help the reader know what the book was about. The story was originally going to focus on the development of my mediumship skills. But I’m just finishing the first draft and it has turned out to be more about finding love than communicating with dead people.
It is similar to Eat, Pray, Love in that a recently divorced woman heads off travelling: just substitute the eating and learning Italian for tango and Spanish.
Then a silly Facebook post showed up on my timeline giving me French Kissing, Fate and Other Natural Disasters. The title didn’t work but I played with the formula: X, Y and Other Things. I came up with Tango, Camino and Other Ways to Find Love.
If that formula doesn’t work for you then try this one.
Eventually I looked up the military alphabet having heard tango, bravo, whiskey so many times on police dramas. I found ‘Romeo’ and it gave me the missing piece for my title, Tango, Camino, Romeo.
My Beautiful Psychosis: Making Sense of Madness is published by Aeon Books and is now available on Audible as a Audiobook.
