Insert Title Here

I have just got back from the first dissection meeting of a new and very promising writers' group, at which I got a lot of useful feedback. I am taking away the message that I am on the right track and am worrying about the right things, though I may need to be a little more careful about some of them.

I have a prospective title.

This was in no way discussed, but an idea has spontaneously occurred anyway. I very much admire the Woody Allen film Match Point, particularly the way that the title tied in not just with the setting, but with the structure as well. The film opens with a tennis player describing how a match can be won or lost if the ball hits the net cord, as it is little more than a coin toss which side of the net the ball will land, causing jubilation to one player and despair to the other. This theme is repeated later in the film, and how the film ends depends on a very similar event (which I won't spoil).

The ending of the novel is very clear to me. George will finish it single (again...), but very much changed for the experience, and he will set off to start university with a new, justified, sense of optimism (not revealing details!). Upbeat is a possible title. It means two things - optimistic in mood, and, musically, the unstressed beat preceding a (more 'interesting') bar/phrase/movement. Both of these fit the feeling with which the novel ends. A paragraph setting this up at the beginning, and another at the end would tie the plot, the setting and the title together nicely I think.

Update

Just a brief update on the situation of this hugely unpopular blog. I intend to discontinue posting new material on Ages of Man (or whatever it eventually gets called) as I believe the project is viable and do not want to have any more material in the public domain. I will continue using this blog to post about the process of writing itself. I will also use it for writing exercises - I have acquired books on good writing technique, and while I'm delighted that there were a number of chapters which taught me nothing new, there are areas which would benefit from working through given exercises, which I will do in due course. I intend to work on a detailed plot for the novel next.

I've also been pretty busy with Real Life lately and haven't had any time to write, but this will hopefully cease to be the case soon.