A Work in Progress

I often wonder when I'm reading, or listening to music, whether or not the work was written before or after the title. It's a common thing for writers not to name their works until after the book or article or poem is finished. Because coming up with a title before everything is done, is kind of like putting the cart before the horse. And many times, once a work is finished, days or months can pass before the editor, writer, publisher or everyone, can agree on a title. Sometimes, a title is easy. Rolls off the tongue the second the last word is finished and it totally make the book complete. But, I find that this usually isn't the case. How do you narrow down 100,000 words to just one or two? Do you go by the subject matter, or a personality of a character, or an emotional theme to the book? What story can the image of these flowers create? I don't love titles. Those are tough. But, I do love writing on prompts. What's that? When a picture or sentence or sin

So, I have this cute child. He's six. Tall for his age. And very much like my firstborn with his perfectionist tendencies. While extremely responsible, and this year has been exceptional -- him telling me what homework he has the day before it's due; that he wants to take his spelling pretests with ABSOLUTELY no help from me, etc -- he forgot something really important the second week of school. He went to school without his shoes. Okay, not the end of the world. I drove up to the "drop off" area, ready to expel my children to the world of learning, when I hear, "I don't have my shoes!" He was so in shock, so scared I would be mad at him, that all I could do was say, "Okay. Wow." No way could I be angry. No way could I tell him that he seriously ruined my morning routine, that I'd be late meeting a friend for coffee, or that I didn't care. Because I did care. And my cute child is everything to me. On the good days. And the bad