SHORT STORY: The title of my new book is, DEEPLY SLEEPLESS: 75 Collected Poems About Love, Death, & Everything
LONGER STORY: The title of the book feels like the most important Marketing detail. And, really, it is! That's why I started working on a short list of possibilities. Starting off with a pen and paper, I proceeded to sit for hours, dazing off into the middle-distance. The next thing I knew, days had passed by. A week in and I started beating myself up for not being done with this *simple* task.
At week three, I draped myself on the ratan bench, dangling my arms in dramatic overhanging style. "What should I name my book?" I asked Patrick with a well developed pout. He looked me but no words formed on his lips. I sighed.
Then began a day of ramping up. I would sigh again. He would ask a question. I would feel no connection with it. He would take a tangent such as the linguistic origin of the word "mood" or some such. I would listen awhile. Well, listen is too strong of a word. I would "feel" the soothing tamber of his voice and let it rock me gently.
What sound he made that zapped me I can not say, but I would suddenly pop up and blurt out a phrase, joke-like, and then laugh it off. "Write it down!" he said. And this game we played for some three or four hours. This is our way. We love to volley creative ideas around. You could call it our foreplay. We did this until I filled a page with half-starts. Some were just titles though most were titles with vague ideas for subtitles.
Finally, I sat at with my laptop and typed these into a list in a Word doc. As the list was developing, the idea came to me that I should enlist the help of some of my friends. Shooting off a message, I asked each individual for preferences and feedback. Thank you Erik, CarrieAnn, Janis, Rod, Margorie, Heather, and JP. I didn't use any of your preferences but your feedback was most valuable to me.
Exhausted, I needed a break. A nice long break.
When the day came for me to submit the title to the Publisher, I gasped. I never settled on anything. Why, oh why did I put it off?!!!! And so, I missed that deadline.
The next day, I swore I wouldn't move from the laptop until I landed on just the right wording. Patrick mentioned that I was Deeply Sleepless that night (like most nights actually. Insomnia is my Goth name!). I casually wrote it down. Remember that there were 75 poems I added that. Well, really, they were 75 poems collected from over 35 years. Hmmm... it was shaping up. And then, it donned on me. Patrick, Dane, and I were always calling my book, my Love & Death poems book. Ha! Obvious, of course!
And that is how this book came to be called, DEEPLY SLEEPLESS: 75 Collected Poems About Love, Death, & Everything.