First Thoughts
A first post, on the first of the month
So I’ve been meaning to float a trial balloon here, a first post, to see how it goes. But I balk. Have I picked the right title for the publication? What’s the right first move in this chess game? Just do it, they say.
In the middle of the night, at the cusp of the month (from All Hallow’s Eve to All Saint’s Day), I think of a title and get up to write this. What should a title do anyway? Evoke the content to come (TK, we say in publishing). Suggest the personality of the author. Set a tone. Catch the curiosity of the reader. Fit into a layout and a URL. Anything else?
Here are my ideas so far.
Writing the I. This is where I started. It includes both keywords “writing” and “I,” which I expect to frame my content here. And “I” can be a pun on eye, since my essays are often about art. It will be easy for readers to find. It’s not too long or too short. The syntax is a little awkward: we don’t write “the I” exactly, though it’s technically grammatical. It doesn’t necessarily tell you anything about me, Victoria, unless the awkward syntax is a clue.
Diving into the Wreck. This came to me a few hours ago as I tried to get back to sleep— maybe that makes it more authentic than something analyzed. It’s the title of a poem by Adrienne Rich, in which a reader/writer explores the submerged history of the cultural past— its treasures and ruins and absences. It’s beautiful and brave. And fitting here because a constant theme of my work is the material culture of the past, canonical or otherwise. Rich knew she was grappling with the “masters” before her, through the drowned sailor in Shakespeare’s Tempest and T.S. Eliot’s “Wasteland,” while also pointing to the names missing from the canon. My memoir is about my father’s art career (though he wasn’t famous), and you can expect posts on everything from King Lear to Cracker Jack. On the downside, though, I am not a poet, or a Rich scholar, or an Americanist, or even an academic any more. This title only evokes me in spirit, as a generalist with broad tastes in culture and as a fountain of literary references.
From Life. This was the title of my published biography, and itself a reference to the titles of my subject, Julia Margaret Cameron. Cameron was a Victorian photographer who specialized in portraits of literary celebrities but also took many photographs of the people in her life, from children and family to maids and neighbors on the Isle of Wight. Cameron scrawled “From life” across many of her images to emphasize photography’s connection to the real— unlike other visual arts, her subjects were once physically present (though her Arthurian and allegorical subjects stretched what she meant by “real”). This title is broad enough to evoke all my content, and tie to my resumé, so to speak. Of the three it’s the closest connection to me, though the least specific about what to expect from the newsletter.
I appreciate the active quality of the opening verb in the first two titles: writing, diving! Diving, especially, feels inviting somehow….Come join me in the pool! I like the simplicity of the last title: two words. What do you think? These are not the only three possible options, of course.
In the meantime, let’s return to Rich: “it is easy to forget/ what I came for,” she writes in the poem. Then later,
the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
What does she mean by this? Like forgetting what you came for, it’s easy to gloss over the difference between "the thing”/”the wreck” and “the story”/”the myth” as obvious, but all that repetition shows that this is very important. Besides, how do you get at the thing in the wreck without its story, which she too is creating right in front of us?
Finally, a writing resource for November, when I, like many of you, will be taking a stab at NaNoWriMo. More on that TK.
Consider Summer Brennan’s Essay Camp, which starts today. I did it in March last year and enjoyed Summer’s curation of essays as well the inspiring community. It’s five dedicated days to write that could start your month off well.
Thanks for being here, at 5AM ET, with me. I’d appreciate any feedback on my titles in the comments— and feel free to share.