A great big house full of empty

The worst thing about house-guests? Is that they flatter to deceive. They come, they talk, they eat, they drink, they come for walks, they talk, they go to bed, they get up, they talk, they come for walks, they eat, they drink - and then they go away. And then they come back for what they forgot, of course, but then they go away again. Too soon, before we're half done talking. I can only go at twelve words an hour in any case, it takes me days to say anything that matters; they'll be halfway to Oregon before I've worked out what I really want to tell them.

Sent 'em off with a proper English breakfast, though. Bacon and sausage and mushroom and poached eggs and two kinds of toast and butter and marmalade and apricot preserves and coffee and grapefruit juice and clementines. If you can't articulate, examine: I gave them a stern examination, and they ate with flying colours.

And they really have gone now, and I? Don't know what to do with myself. The boys are napping in unusual places, which is a fine example to uphold except that I, y'know, don't nap. Am not a napper.

One more cup of coffee, maybe. A clementine. A book. Then maybe I'll remember that this is not a holiday. But it felt like a holiday; I had friends.

Titles: a superfluity

Geoff Ryman says that writers like to clear their throats. This is a good; it gives employment to editors, that they may cut superfluous paragraphs at the start of a story, superfluous chapters from early-draft novels.

I am as guilty of this as anyone, except that I do not call it guilt. I refuse to recognise the thing as a fault; I like the sound of a writer feeling their way into a story, tuning up, warming up. I think it's a part of the performance. Once - deliberately - I wrote a story that had three separate beginnings, and I defended every one of them.

Separate-but-linked: as you know, Bob, most of my stories don't start with the opening paragraph, no. They start with the title. It's an inherent part of the process, and I'm rarely comfortable even thinking about a story let alone writing it unless it has a title sat astride it.

I've recently been commissioned - with money, yet! - to write a ghost story set during the American Civil War. Knowing as I do almost nothing about the American Civil War, I was glad to be nudged towards a known, recorded incident. Okay, I thought, I can do that. Background, location, events: tick. Opening line, yay. No idea what the story is, but we're all set to start - except, oh. Need a title. Okay, go for a walk, think about that...

People, I came home with two titles. I have no idea where either of them would lead the story, but they're both deliciously viable - and I can't choose. I can't play favourites, between two charmers.

So for now at least, this unwritten story has two titles.

"Like Quicksilver for Gold: or, The Bridge Truth Is To Beauty."

There. I can work with that. Those. That.