99 Titles Free For The Taking
Many writers have trouble with titles. I've often listened to them describing the extended anguish they've experienced when trying to come up with exactly the right title for a work of poetry and prose. Rather than pretending to share their pain, I then have to confess (sheepishly!) that I have the opposite problem: too many titles and no stories, poems, or novels to go with them. Titles pop into my mind all the time, from here, there, and everywhere. Since the late seventies, I've kept a list of these titles. At the moment, my list numbers 559, with more to come in short order, I'm sure. Of these, I have actually used only 49 for my own work. That leaves me with 510 orphan titles. If I live to be a hundred, I will never be able to use all these titles. I have often joked that, if things get tough, I will publish my list of titles. So here is a small selection from the larger list. Please give at least one of these sad orphans a good home at the top of a brilliant piece of your writing!
1. An Indiscretion in Three Acts
2. Conversations Under Glass
3. Second Person Accusative
4. Intimacy and the Ice-box
5. And Then And Then And Then
6. You Wouldn't Know Me If You Knew Me Now
7. The Woman in the Yellow Dress
8. I Hate Flamingoes
9. Some People
10. Damage Done
11. The Tree Family
12. Electrical Activity
13. The Wives of Daniel Bolt
14. Now You See It (Now You Don't)
15. Did You See That?
16. Take A Closer Look
17. Don't Touch Me There
18. Patience Is A Virgin
19. Bar Talk
20. The Next Day and the Next
21. All the Rage in Paris
22. Not On Your Life
23. How Could You?
24. A Sick Little Story
25. Fighting Fire With Fire
26. Your Pretty Little Head (Don't You Worry)
27. Honey, Is That You?
28. Major Appliances
29. I Was Wrong About You
30. Is It Any Wonder?
31. A Fate Worse Than Death
32. Go Jump in the Lake
33. All Stories End
34. Lost Tickets
35. I Talk in Tongues
36. No Further Questions
37. Landscape with Figures
38. Snakes and Ladders
39. How Does It Feel To Be Perfect?
40. Lie to the Women
41. Talking with My Hands
42. The Standard of Living
43. I Like A Tattoo
44. Popular Mechanics
45. Woman Who Loves Too Much
46. (No One in Their) Right Mind
47. I Wouldn't If I Were You
48. Cruel and Unusual Punishment
49. All in Less Time Than It Takes to Die
50. Errors of Omission
51. For Crying Out Loud
52. Reasonably Attractive Gentleman Seeks Fairly Nice Lady, 28 to 35
53. One Thing After Another
54. A Witch in A Windstorm
55. The Seriousness of Sunday
56. Victims, Villains, and Excess
57. Words in Collision
58. Sad But True
59. Dead to the World
60. Man Very Early Made Jars Stand Up Nearly Perpendicular
61. Play It By Ear
62. Throw Caution to the Wind
63. The Ineffable Seductiveness of Succumbing Virture
64. Third Person (The)
65. The Price of Dreaming
66. An Exemplary Life
67. Mistakes I Never Made, Lies I Never Told
68. A Barrel of Monkeys
69. The Same Old Story
70. The Trouble With You
71. To Make A Long Story Short
72. Three Steps Forward, Two Steps Back
73. Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death
74. All Things Considered
75. I Can Hear You Smiling
76. With My Heart in My Mouth
77. The Ends of the Earth
78. What I Did After You Left
79. You Can Run But You Can't Hide
80. Four Things God Wants You To Know
81. You Know Who You Are
82. Daydreams of Archaeology and Ambition
83. The History Ahead of Us
84. Learning to Live Without Desire
85. A Plain White Woman
86. What I Forgot to Tell You
87. The Next Thing You Know
88. Too Little Too Late
89. Lorenzo's Last Wife
90. The Revisionist Theory of Life
91. Seven Wonders of the Modern World
92. Chapter and Verse
93. Old Moon in the New Moon's Arms
94. What We Were Doing While The Sun Went Down
95. A Story for All the Angelas
96. Errata
97. Give Me One Good Reason
98. Is It Any Wonder?
99. Stranger Things Have Happened
