What Should I Title My Next Book?

Six ideas in need of your input

Dear Living Dark reader,

I write today to ask for your creative help.

When I launched this newsletter back in September 2022, I knew it might end up becoming a repository for material that I would one day want to transform into a book. Nineteen month later, that day has arrived. Essays have accumulated. Connections have suggested themselves. A preliminary structure to organize at least twenty-one posts (and maybe more, plus additional material) into three sections has emerged. There’s a good energy circulating throughout the whole thing.

At the moment I still haven’t decided whether this book is something for which I’ll want to seek traditional publication or something I will want to publish myself. As I sit here awaiting a sense of guidance and direction, the odds are equal in both directions.

Also undetermined is the title. And that’s where you come in. Throughout my twenty-five years as a published writer, coming up with titles has always been my least favorite part of the process. I struggle with it. Sometimes I agonize over it. I don’t have a natural feel for it. Whenever a right title does somehow emerge—such as when the title of my first book, Divinations of the Deep, came to me in a hypnagogic rush back in 2001 while I lay in bed waiting for sleep—it’s exhilarating. But usually it’s just a long and painful slog.

Sure, I have worked with editors, and their title suggestions have been immensely helpful. I have also sought input from friends and colleagues, and they have likewise proved helpful. Ask me about the feedback I got three years ago when I was debating over what to title my essay collection What the Daemon Said. I told a dozen friends and colleagues that it would either be that or Shadows in the Corner of His Transcendental Eye. Their collective wisdom helped me to avoid the latter disaster.

But one thing I have never done is to seek public input. Not for a book, not for a story, not for an article or essay. And that, my friends, changes today, and for a good and simple reason: because it has been through my interactions with you and all of the other readers of TLD—a subscriber audience that has now grown to 2,500 strong—that the contents of this new book have come into being. For several weeks I have been casting about mentally, sometimes in the background, sometimes in the focused forefront of my thoughts, for the right words to form themselves, for the right title to coalesce from the aether. In my experience, it has always been clearly evident when that happens. The feeling is electrical. The right title is both a capstone and a talisman. It encapsulates and transmits the vision and energetic wavelength of a text. I find this to be true as both a writer and a reader. For this new book, the magic has eluded me thus far.

Only yesterday it occurred to me that the missing ingredient is obvious, and that this ingredient is you, for the reason stated above.

So, dear reader, please help. Please comment on this post or email me at matt-at-livingdark-dot-net with your suggestions.

What follows is a list of six titles and subtitles that have suggested themselves through a fairly intensive process of intuitive deliberation. Please read them. Also, if you like, scan back through TLD’s post archive to remind yourself of what this publication is about, where it has been, and where it has decided to go. Remember that its official description is presently “writing and waking up at the intersection of nonduality and the creative daimon muse, by a cosmic horror author, former English professor, pianist, and college VP.” Compare that to the title ideas below. Mix and match prospective titles and subtitles, ideas and themes. Let me know if any item on the list announces itself as the perfect title. Or maybe you’d prefer a remix of several. Or maybe, having grokked the direction the book is headed, you’ll want to suggest an entirely new idea.

Just know that I’m all ears.

The contenders:

1. The Writer’s Dharma: Nonduality and the Call to Create

2. The Nondual Daemon: Inspiration and Awakening on the Writer’s Path

3. Writing at the Wellspring: Where Creativity Meets Awakening

4. Beyond Words: Illuminating the Writer’s Journey

5. Writing with the Daemon: A Guide to Waking Up on the Writer’s Path

6. Casting Words in the Void: Creativity, Nonduality, and the Writer's Muse

I await your thoughts with keen anticipation and gratitude. Again, you can either comment here or email me your thoughts at matt-at-livingdark-dot-net.

Warm regards,