No, I didn’t forget to change the title. This is a blog post about blog post titles. On several occasions, most recently at the APT conference in Providence, someone has made a point of saying to me that they specifically liked or disliked the way I title posts. In other words, not the content, but the titles had caught their eye.
Here is, in my opinion, the platonic ideal of a title. In Raymond Chandler’s Farewell My Lovely1, a woman named Velma Valento schemes, changes her name, betrays people, and eventually commits serious crimes, in order to escape her past and improve her social standing. It works for a while, but not in the long run.2 The novel ends with the detective, Philip Marlowe, staring out across the southern California landscape: “It was a cool day and very clear. You could see a long way-but not as far as Velma had gone.” Fifty years after Chandler’s novel, Nicholas Freeling published a mystery about a missing woman, titled Not As Far As Velma. That is perfect. If you’ve read Chandler’s book, you’ll likely know what that means; if not, the obscure title in no way interferes with your enjoyment of Freeling’s book.
My serious3 blog posts run 200 to 500 words each. People read them or not – it’s up to them and I’m okay with it either way. I find it hard to believe that people will choose whether they will spend a minute or two reading a blog post based on the title. So the titles don’t have to be particularly descriptive and can be sideways references4. And sometimes they are.
- Not a great title, if you ask me. ↩︎
- I’m being vague because I feel guilty about publishing plot spoilers for a mystery, even if the mystery is 85 years old. ↩︎
- I.e., not weekend. ↩︎
- The sideways business is not limited to titles. Is this blog post a discussion of blog post titles, or a way to publicize two books I like? ↩︎
