My novel-in-the-works has undergone plot, character and title changes so many times I would be hard pressed to piece together a remotely accurate history. Now, too late, do I understand the use of a writing diary.

I can't say I truly embrace the necessity of it as others have written but see how it could track the odd process of a novel's creation. In one way, it's similar to the behind-the-scenes video so much a necessity in creating a film. What I don't fully get is the way a writing diary  is supposed to keep a writer on track or to get difficulties with a work out in the open. I tried it for the better part of a year and, for all the good it did for me now and then, it proved more just another thing to do in my already over-busy schedule.

I stopped keeping up with it when I realized everything I was supposed to be gaining from a writing diary I was getting from this blog. Blogging is public, so I'm confident I'm less candid in my journaling than if I knew no one would ever see my notes. That's a huge difference. But I also find that -- and maybe it's because I'm Irish -- when I journal, I go on and on and dwell in the negative. In this public forum, I steer away from those doldrums.

So, if I'm journaling, I should get to the story.

Here's the basic idea of my head-on-a-stump story
An Ojibwe man in the Great Lakes area before contact with white men kills off his lifelong rival. His punishment is years of penance spent as a disembodied head on the stump of a mystical tree. Escape from his imprisonment, if it is at all possible, must come from inside himself, all that remains. 

Obviously, I suppose, by referring to my story as "The head-on-a-stump story" whenever it's mentioned, it's clear I am having difficulty titling the work.

It's been called "The Letter From William Waiklin." That fell by the wayside when I decided not to include William Waiklin in the story. In fact I cut out the letter. That's for a second story. There's an outside chance he and the letter will be included as a second part too. Whether or not they do will hinge on the length of the section I'm working on now. Day to day, my estimation of the novel's length changes. One day, i see it going to 250 pages; the next I see it barely reaching novella length.

It's been called "Felled." I liked the feel of it. It was direct and looked good on a mock cover I created. But the more I tested the title, the more it sounded like bad grammar. Maybe I'm succumbing to the idea that Americans are less literate than they once were. I go back to this title more often than any other, though, so I suppose there's something to it.

It's been called something like "Fraxus cryptica." I thought that title -- which means Mysterious Oak in scientific speak -- would be totally lost on people. It was short-lived.

It's been called "The Beating Heart Tree." That was what the old Ojibwe I had relate the mythology of the tree called it. I scrapped that one pretty quickly too. I read an article in the November - December issue of Writers Weekly which mentioned men won't buy anything with "Heart" in the title. 

Right now it's called "Hatred Oak." I think, like Felled, it has some directness. Like Fraxus cryptica, it refers to a fictional type of tree without mystifying the reader. It's not clear whether the title refers to a tree or a place, though, but I'm not sure how much, if at all, that matters.

This is probably all a waste of time anyway. I've read that authors, even experienced, published authors, don't choose the names of their novels. Before it's all said and done, it'll probably end up titled "The Head On a Stump."