Before delving into this week’s topic of titles, I have to say that I have been pleasantly surprised by the responses I’ve been getting. I appreciate the positive comments and encouragement. Special thanks to the folks who have taken the time to read what I’ve written and send constructive responses. While I love encouragement, it's the constructive feedback that helps me understand how to improve the book.
Here are some of the things I’ve heard from multiple people:
- Include less quoting of resources and more of my own thoughts
- Give a better indication in the Introduction of the perspective I’m writing from (Evangelical Christian)
I plan to address those as well as other feedback in subsequent drafts of the first three chapters I’ve shared. I'm trying to keep writing new chapters rather than revising the existing ones for now. I have an ever expanding list of things to revise!
Back to our regularly scheduled programming... One of the most critical parts of a book is the smallest—its title. My wife feels that the title of my last book (Limit Your Greed) hurt it. After all, who wants to have less? I felt that a controversial title was more likely to get looked at which is the first hurdle. Sales indicate she was more correct! I think it works best to pick a title early as possible so the book itself can then be written to support the title. It’s a lot harder to change the contents of a book to match a new title than the other way around. (As someone reminded me, the publisher usually picks a title. I’m currently leaning toward self-publishing, so that may well not be an issue.)
Here are some possible titles I’ve come up with as well as a few based on what folks have said to me:
- Descriptive
- Biblical retirement
- A Spiritual Plan for Retirement
- God’s View of Retirement
- Retirement God’s Way
- Retiring to Do God’s Work
- More abstract
- Repurposed, Not Retired (thanks, Ken H.)
- Don’t Retire, Reboot Your Life (or restart or reset)
- Catchy
- If Jesus Laid Down His Hammer (thanks, Walt)
- Old-fashioned Retirement
The book probably needs chapter titles, though just using chapter numbers is a possibility. I’ve gone mostly with descriptive titles at this point, but memorable ones are probably better. In Limit Your Greed, we made each chapter title be a phrase found in the chapter. One chapter was titled, “everyone wins, or nobody wins.” That approach might work here. Another possibility would be for each chapter to start with a Bible verse from which the title is taken. For example, the chapter on leisure could be titled a few different ways:
- None – Chapter 4
- Simple – Leisure
- Memorable – Leisure: God’s Gift of Satan’s Snare?
- Chapter content quoted – We need leisure to be with God (Leonard Doohan quote)
- Scriptural – I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28)
Do you have any preference? This topic is one that all of you can help with. Do you like (or hate) any of those titles? Do you have any ideas of your own?
I need to get back to the critical chapter on biblical retirement. It’s the one most likely to change as I write other chapters, but I can’t put it off too long given its importance. It is one where I will really need feedback from you all!
As always, thanks for your help. The acknowledgements section of the book keeps growing!
