What''s in a title?

Sometimes a project can begin with nothing more than a title. Christmas at the Juniper Tavern began this way. Sodom, Gomorrah & Jones began this way. A title you love pops into your head and you begin brooding about content appropriate to the title.

But sometimes a title can linger long without resolution, without finding its content. This is the case with a title I've been wrestling with since the 1980s: Women I Have Tried To Know. I originally thought of it as a two-actor play, a narrator-man and the half dozen women in his life, each played by the same actress. A play actors would love to do if written right. I could never write in right, not through a dozen or so attempts.

Once I tried it as a novel but didn't get far. I even tried it as an opera libretto and got nowhere.

Now, today for some reason, yet another approach popped into my brain, I tossed out two quick opening pages, and this may be the way to go: a long narrative poem. There is considerable advantage in this form. It cannot possibly be commercial, it lends itself to irony and introspection, it is slow by nature, it resists cheap shots, sexual histrionics and exploitation.

At the same time, it's a very difficult way to go. It would be long and slow to create, maybe requiring more time than I have. But it will keep me dabbling in something comfortably inside-out (as opposed to the kind of inside-out writing that flirts with nervous breakdown), since outside-in writing seems to be impossible for me these days. Something to dabble in and make me look like I'm keeping busy while waiting for the bus.

I suppose I'll continue to dabble with it. I wish I had thought of this approach ten years ago.