At long last...

My brain is mush. I wrote well over 4,000 words yesterday in the hopes of completing my fourth book by next week. Can I say I love it? I do. I absolutely love it. It's very hard for me to discern at this stage in the game if the book is "good"--if it's something that my agent and publisher will like, if it's something audiences will respond to--but I think it's a positive sign that I hop out of bed in the morning ecstatic to keep working on it.

Again, this book is a different bird for me. After the Leaves Fall and Summer Snow were sort of sweet and reflective. The Moment Between is weighted and gripping. And my fourth book is a bit of a mix of the two with moments of real humor and... fun. Yeah, there are a lot of fun things in this book. One of my characters, a young woman named Meg Painter, is an Avril Lavigne sort of girl--tomboyish, tough, a little wild. She makes for many interesting scenes, and I had to learn a lot about BMX, football, and hitchhiking to make her come to life. No, I didn't hitchhike; Aaron wouldn't let me. Yesterday I wrote a chapter that kept my heart pumping from beginning to end... Sometimes it's hard when your characters grow and evolve in ways you never planned. I'd love to tell you more, but I'll have to leave it at that for now.

However, I can tell you that in my scene from yesterday I believe I finally unearthed the title of this book! Hooray! I'm so sick of calling it "My Fourth Book," though I do think it would be funny to actually title a book that someday. Maybe when I make it to my tenth I'll just call it that. #10. Anyway, without further ado, the bit of dialogue that contains the title:

“Hey,” Dawson said before she could muster the courage to speak. “It’s okay, Meg. You’re still my girl. You’re just my sometimes girl. Sometimes I have you, sometimes I don’t. It’s enough.” He didn’t say "for now," but the limitation was implied.

Did you catch it? Sometimes Girl.

Hmmm. I loved it last night and so did Aaron. Now it seems a little... I don't know. We'll see. Titles are the hardest part of writing for me and I always come up with them at the very last minute. More accurately, my agent and editors steer me in the right direction at the very last minute. I was dead-set on calling The Moment Between by a much grittier title: The Body Broken. Maybe Sometimes Girl will change. Maybe not. What do you think?

Help me out here. If you're a writer, how do you come up with a title? If you're not a writer, what are some of your all-time favorite book or movie titles? I'd love to hear what sorts of titles grab you.