Title Matters. Really?

Shakespeare once said something about names once, quite famously so I must add. Something about names not mattering. And I have mostly agreed with him. The keyword here is mostly.

Most of the times I’d finish a piece, and then I’d think about the title. Think. Oh wait, I don’t think about a name, ever. This holds true when I’m talking about the other cases too, where I do believe names matter. Is it getting too confusing? Let me explain.

Case A:

Most of the times, when I’ve finished a piece I have no idea about the name. I do have some idea regarding the theme, the soul of the piece if you will. And so I’m not really thinking about the title it just comes to me.

Case B:

But that’s not how it happens all of the time. Sometimes all I do have is the title and nothing else. Sometimes, when I’m having troubles all that it takes is for me to name the piece and somehow magically, I’m able to see past the hurdles at the finish line! Just like that! A swoosh of the damn wand!

This is what happened to me quite recently. The challenges that I was talking about in Calculations. I was having trouble keeping the story taut, trouble imagining the characters, their actions, and the situations they were in, when suddenly I named one chapter in the first part. And as I did that, everything fell into place. Just like that! A swoosh of the damn wand! You see I had tapped into the soul of the damn thing. I now knew what this particular chapter was about. What I want my reader to feel as he goes through the chapter (what he feels eventually, is entirely a matter of perception; and another post sometime). And so I had a foundation, a solid foundation to build my monument on!

P.S. Some couple of thousand words into the second chapter. Pace is good. Cheers!