For a while now, I've been struggling with a title for my book - and the two books that will follow to make up the trilogy. First mistake, give the title so much power that you can't help but buckle under its impossible edict.
Should you decide to do a search on "how to title a novel," hoping to find some bit of inspiration, you'll find the same vague suggestions over and over. Use the hero's name or the villain's name or aspects of their character or place or a metaphor. The list goes on. But for me, it failed to inspire.
So, Rabbit, Run. John Updike does so much here. So much to steal--from the richness of a protagonist that you simultaneously care about and despise, to the impending sense of claustrophobia that existence seems to usher in underhandedly ("As he closes the door he feels he has spent his whole life opening and closing this door"), to the impossibility of simple resolution.
But what I need most right now is title guidance, and here, at least, I have my first step forward.
Rabbit, Run. An imperative. Maybe instead of trying to pull a title intact from the narrative, I start with mood. Grammatical mood. A command. Run, hold, steal, breathe. That at least feels like a start.
