Love them or hate them, titles in creative writing are important. They may serve as a pitch of sorts, convincing the reader to keep reading. They set the tone of the writing. There is the straightforward title, directly stating the subject of the writing. Some titles are jokes which, if they land, make the reader feel welcome and included. We may see, at the beginning of a poem or hung up next to a painting in a museum in small print, the “untitled” title as well.

I’ve gone through periods of loving the title. Often, I’ve written poems that come from a title, and the title was my favorite part of the poem. Other times, after trying for days, weeks, months to come up with a title for one poem, I’ve simply picked something, wiped my hands, and said, “Good enough.” Writing a title can feel like putting the cherry on top of your great poem or it can feel like walking on eggshells, where the wrong title could ruin the whole poem and you just can’t come up with the right one!

While teaching my zine class with students at City High School, I overheard a few students groaning (high school students are dramatic after all) that they couldn’t come up with a title for their zine. When I heard these complaints, I flashed back to a conversation I recently had with a friend about titles. I realized this whole title issue was common enough for kids and adults alike, and thus came this quick and easy-to-follow workshop on titles.

This workshop was made for titling zines, but I think it can be used for titling any creative work—written or otherwise.

WORKSHOP

1. Complete the following sentence. Keep it short.

In my zine is/are _____.

2. In under 30 seconds, brainstorm 7 words associated with your zine.

3. Did you make any discoveries while making your zine? (Discoveries about your zine topic or about yourself)

4. Write your favorite line from your zine.

5. Is there some background information about your process that you didn’t make obvious in your zine? Explain it here.

6. Is there another voice or angle you could introduce? A sarcastic, playful, menacing, mocking, undermining voice are all potential voices. What playfulness, or what angle would you want to add that wasn’t clear in the work?

Review your answers to questions 1-6. Circle/highlight any words or phrases that could be a title.

Example:

1. In this zine are erasure poems of Lacanian philosophy and collage in the first half, followed by those erasure poems typed out and formatted in the second half.

2. Image / sharpie / black out / text / language imagery / destroy / rewrite / my own / this is my poem now / left out / what’s left out

3. Discoveries of my thorough frustration with objectified bodies (of either gender) in post-colonial culture

4. “I am on points”

5. It is an erasure of Lacan’s “The Innocence of the Letter”

6. It’s not so simple / I bought this desire for 99 cents /

Circle/ highlight any words or phrases that could be a title.

2. In this zine are erasure poems of Lacanian philosophy and collage in the first half, followed by those erasure poems typed out and formatted in the second half.

7. Image / sharpie / black out / text / language imagery / destroy / rewrite / my own / this is my poem now / left out / what’s left out

8. Discoveries of my thorough frustration with objectified bodies (of either gender) in post-colonial culture

9. “I am on points”

10. It is an erasure of Lacan’s “The Innocence of the Letter”

11. It’s not so simple / I bought this desire for 99 cents /

Options for a title:

Erasure poems of Lacanian philosophy
This is my poem now
What’s left out
I am on points
“The Innocence of the Letter”
I bought this desire for 99 cents.