Book Title

Since the action of my book takes place around a college production of Mid Summers Night Dream, I'm thinking of calling it "What Fools These Mortals Be" or some variation of it, maybe even just "What Fools."

This means I will spend the next few months reading criticism of the play to try and discover themes I can use that I hadn't already picked out on my own.  It's probably presumptuous to borrow a title from Shakespeare, but when Faulkner did it, it left an impression on me, so maybe it will have a similar effect if I do it.  You're also supposed to write what you know, and theater is something I know.

I constantly worry that if I write about unpleasant people doing unpleasant things, even though they're imaginary, somebody will point out that I'm no prince either, and they'd be right.  That's the point, though.  I'm not writing about evil people.  I'm writing about ordinary people faced with situations that don't match any of the good and evil scenarios their parents taught them at a time when most young Americans got their morality from television, and on television, America's favorite dad was Bill Cosby.  

I have stories with a pleasant ending, but this isn't it.  The best I can say is that everybody survives by the last page.  Some learn from the experience.  Some don't.  I'm not even trying to teach my readers anything.  It's an image of an echo of a time.  I hope to make somebody care about what happens to my imaginary people, even if the imaginary people don't get what they want or even what they need.