Hi everyone and Happy Wednesday! The Insecure Writers’ Group is a group of writers offering motivation and encouragement to all those taking on the challenges of writing. Every month the ISWG sponsors a blog hop where writers can blog about a topic related to overcoming obstacles and exploring various aspects of the writing journey. If you’d like to participate in a future hop you can join here. It’s always a great experience, and I recommend it to anyone who is interested in writing and sharing with other writers.
Every month there is an optional discussion question. This month the question is as follows:
November 3 Discussion Question: What’s harder to do, coming up with your book title or writing the blurb?
Picking a title for your book can be hard. For some the right title arrives as glorious inspiration, the perfect name for a beautiful work of art. For others (myself included), it takes some time and thought, or sometimes a LOT of time and thought. And even then, the perfect title can be elusive. The process of naming my book is still ongoing for me, a subject I’ve blogged about before: “Help, Book in Search of Title!”
But if I had to pick which is harder, the title or the book blurb? No contest. For me, it’s the book blurb.
You see, I’m not good at being succinct. I write in a very wordy fashion, and having to condense a book down into a a couple of paragraphs of text….wow. Sometimes I think it would be easier to just rewrite the whole book. This book blurb is not something that I’m doing well with, at all. I have yet to write even a single blurb that sounds good to me, let alone to anyone else. It needs to sound exciting, and captivating. And summarize the highlights of your book so that a reader will want to pick it up and spend some time reading it. And obviously it needs to do all of this in a reasonable length of time. It’s a lot to think about. For me, it’s a work in progress.
How about you? Do you think the title is easier to write, or the book blurb? Do you have any strategies for writing your book blurb? What titles catch your eye, and what kinds of book blurbs entice you to pick up a book and read? Let me know in the comments!
Wishing you happy, productive writing 🙂
-Winter
Winter Betancourt 
Book blurbs come easy for me. The synopsis, however, is a beast to conquer!
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Haha that’s a hard one for me too! I’m just not good at summarizing anything at all!
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Book title is toughest for me. My guide is to consider the overall effect of the narrative. Am I trying to reveal the character? Is the story the result of an event or an issue? I imagine someone at a bookstore in front of the shelf looking at the title and wondering and wanting to know more before flipping the book over to read the back. It’s an honesty and integrity thing. I want to promise the reader a hint of where I am going before even opening the cover. So, for me, the title is the greater struggle.
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Thank you so much for reading! I like that perspective and the image of the reader at the bookstore deciding whether they want to pick the book up to learn more. You’re right, a title is definitely crucial to conveying many things to the reader, and I agree it’s really challenging to come up with the right name that expresses everything we want to share about the book in only one to a few words! It’s a process I’m still in the middle of and I’m still not coming up with the right thing!
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Cripes, blurb, or title? I get the title before I start writing, it is my inspiration. Book blurb is harder. I am OK with synopsis if they like you to submit a page plus, it gets hard when they want a short one. All of it is a challenge. Why do we do it? Good luck one and all. Have a fab weekend. x
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Thanks so much Jane. I totally agree, it seems like the more succinct something has to be, the more challenging! It’s so hard to summarize a book into a couple of paragraphs. The title is way more fun to develop!
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So true. x
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I want to write 2 books, but don’t believe that can happen soon. I think what you’re involved in here is wonderful & helpful idea for many that has materialized!
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Thank you so much Dawn for your kind words! I know exactly how you feel, but don’t get discouraged I know you will absolutely get those two books written! I get discouraged often because I get tired at nights and then I pause on my writing for a long time, sometimes I feel like I’ll never find the time to pick it back up. We’ll all get there!
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Thank you, Winter. It sounds like you go and go and go, until all of a sudden you realize you’re too sleepy to accomplish another thing for that day. I’ve been away from a book portion (I mostly gave up on) & too long posts, that I’ve had to re-read everything I wrote or typed just to recover the vibe with which I began. Thank you for the optimism, I’m gonna hold tight to it. I hope you find the way to work on it, during daylight, perhaps.
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