My book is called Well Out to Sea. My son still calls it “My Life in Kenya.”
One morning last winter, as I sat in a parking lot on the mainland waiting for the appointed time for my meeting with the potential publisher of my book, Garrison Keillor’s “Writer’s Almanac” came on the car radio. Keillor read a portion of a letter from Mark Twain to his own publisher concerning the work on Huckleberry Finn: “I am piling up manuscript in a really astonishing way. I believe I shall complete, in two months, a book which I have been fooling over for seven years. This summer it is no more trouble to me to write than it is to lie.” Then Keillor read a poem called “People who Eat in Coffee Shops.” That would be me. I knew that this was a sign.
A handshake in a publisher’s office sent me on my way to sort and re-type and proofread and get permissions and do all the other clerical tasks necessary to make a book out of a pile of old newspaper columns and online hectoring. That was all pretty easy. There was only one problem: this collection had no title.
I didn’t think this would be a problem, because I like making up titles. So I thought. I should have known trouble was coming by the way most of my newspaper and magazine editors have been changing my titles over the past couple of years. “Whence a Catamount?” became “Island students leave home early.” “Pie, Kale, and Sheetrock” became “Thanksgiving on Matinicus.” Editors do not like obscure references; they want their headline blunt and they want it easy-reader style. The truth is, they want it search-engine friendly.
The Internet, by the way, makes the task of choosing a title more a process of elimination than an act of art. Anything we consider must be “Googled,” and one might decide against a perfectly workable title just because of what else comes up nearby online. Then, there’s Amazon. You’d be surprised what some people name their-ahem, “adult” novels. Outer Island, for example-who’d have thunk it? Amazon’s website tells us that: “Customers who bought Outer Island also bought Slave Girls in Training.” OK, maybe that’s off the list.
When my neighbor, author and illustrator Gail Gibbons brought out her children’s book, Surrounded by Sea-Life on a New England Fishing Island, one local wise-aleck chose to rename it “Life on a New England Fighting Island.” Likewise, most any title I chose would be subject to the arch cleverness of my friends and family. “Out on the Edge,” recalling the title of my column in one of the Rockland newspapers for 4 ½ years, was briefly a possibility, but it had already become “On the Ledge” or “Out on the #$%^* Ledge” around here. “Out to Sea” was considered, although my husband normally rendered that “Out to Lunch.”
Friends made all sorts of helpful suggestions. One sent a note proposing that the collection of articles be called “Dispatches from the Matinicus Tactical Team Spa and Grill.” Others picked up on every one-line remark and advised that become my title; thus, we had options like “This isn’t Little House on the Ledge-pile,” “The second of the two guys who shot at me is dead,” and “How can they play Sibelius in weather like this?”
Paul just suggested “Write if you find work.”
The other problem was that the best titles for this sort of thing have been taken. Perhaps, though, given the Matinicus theme running through this work, I could take subtle inspiration from some established authors. Oliver Sacks wrote The Island of the Colorblind but Weston always called this place “The Island of the Misfit Toys.” That would do it. Caskie Stinnett wrote Slightly Offshore; we might call my book “A heck of a lot more than just Slightly Offshore.” Instead of Ogilvie’s My World is an Island, how about “My Lobster Territory is an Island?” How about “Keep the Lights Burning, Paul?” Philip Conkling’s Islands in Time has a lovely title, but this place might be better described as “Islands in Mud.” Or “Islands in Fog.” Or worse. With apologies to Linda Greenlaw, maybe “Life in a Very Small Fishbowl.” Recalling Sandy Phippen, perhaps “The Police Know Nothing.”
Twenty years ago my friend Karen South and I used to joke about writing a book about this place. Re-calling a story about Dick Moody’s store and how he wouldn’t sell anybody any cheese, but he instructed the Saturday store clerk to clean the large wheel regularly, we were going to call it “What do you expect from a place where they have to dust the cheese?”
Eva Murray is a freelance writer who lives on Matinicus. Her book, Well Out to Sea: Year-Round on Matinicus Island (Tilbury House) was released July 1.