What Titles Tell Us

When I started writing my memoir almost ten years ago, I thought I was writing a story about our family breeding our Portuguese Water Dog, Spray, as our last family adventure before my older daughter, Maggie, left for college. 

I had kept a blog about the dog and puppies, at my husband’s suggestion, and about a year after the puppies were born and gone to their forever homes, and Maggie was ensconced in college life, he suggested that maybe there was a book in the puppy story. My working title was Puppy Love. 

I began to write. I was pretty impressed with my first draft until I sent it to a couple of editor/teachers and heard the ugly truth that it wasn’t much of a story, let alone, memoir. One editor suggested I amp up the marriage conflict. This was the heart of the book, she said. 

Matt thought Spray was the perfect dog. Compared to our first highly anxious PWD, any dog would have been fabulous, and he thought breeding her would produce other wonderful puppies and it would be a great adventure. I disagreed. Eventually, I got on board, and thus we had our last family exploit. 

I also disagreed with the editor about the core of the story. But, I did acknowledge that maybe these readers were right – it wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready.

I didn’t know what I was writing about and it showed. To move the story along, I asked myself questions. What was I trying to understand, or resolve?

s the book matured, my writing improved, and I restructured the story, it went through more revisions, with other titles, including: Pieces: Stitching My Life Back Together, Dogs, Daughters, and Depression, and A Year of Lasts: How I Got Better at Good-Bye. 

I had a story to tell. I just didn’t know at first what it was. It was there under the surface. I was so annoyed with myself and the book that I put it in a figurative drawer where I left it for three years, during which time Matt and I moved to Hawaii, I joined a new magazine, The Bucket, as managing editor and Matt and I moved back home.

Then came the pandemic, and an opportunity to revisit the memoir. This time, I figured it out. While the overall story was about goodbyes, I hadn’t seen how all the pieces fit together – Maggie leaving for college and the puppies moving on to their forever homes. 

As I was revising for the 900th time, suddenly the pieces slid together like a jigsaw puzzle. I texted a friend: “It’s not about the puppies, it’s about Maggie”. She texted back: “I told you that three years ago.” 

Sometimes, you only hear what you want to, ignoring the helpful, but hard, truth.

I wrote about all the goodbyes in my life, and the depression I fought. I was telling it partly through the puppies, but mostly through my daughter’s departure, and my then dive into depression. 

I finished my memoir, with the permanent title of Emptying the Nest: Getting Better at Goodbyes, with a new beginning saying goodbye to my daughter on the steps of her dorm her freshmen year, and a new ending documenting the adventures my husband and I have had since our kids moved out, including Hawaii, getting a new puppy, and starting new businesses. 

I wrote about a mother who is unprepared for how deep her sadness would go when her family shifted size and structure. It is also the story of how this woman climbed out of her dark pit and created a life for herself- one that she/I am quite pleased with. I miss my daughters, and the life we had as a family. But I rather like this new life of adventures, of focusing more on me. It’s fulfilling and fun. 

In addition to finding my way as a writer, I also had to find my way to a publisher. After many rejections from agents for Puppy Love, when I finally had Emptying the Nest, I knew I didn’t want to spend a lot of time looking for a traditional publisher. I was realistic and knew my book was what they call “quiet”. I wasn’t a known entity, and I was older. I ended up with a hybrid, Ten16 Press, who I couldn’t have been happier with. I had input on my cover, included photos in the book itself, and always had all my questions answered.  

Emptying the Nest was published in May, 2023, the day after I turned 65. It was a fabulous birthday

Now I am working on another project – this time a collection of essays that hopefully tell the story of the narrator (me) finding home, something I’ve spent much of my life searching for. I’m not sure how to organize them, and how to choose which essays to include, and which don’t.  

I am more patient now. I still would like to finish it and find it a home, but writing a book takes time, (for some of us), and a willingness to get messy and ask questions to help figure out what we’re writing. 

I’m on the right track as I’ve already gone through several test titles, such as See You on The Vineyard, Finding Me, Islands in my Life, and instead of being frustrated, I am excited to see how this new story will develop, and what I end up with for a title, and as a book. For now, the workig title is Finding Home. I’m enjoying the journey, not just obsessing over the final product. I’m being kind to my writer self.

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MORGAN BAKER is an award-winning writer and professor at Emerson College. Her memoir Emptying the Nest: Getting Better at Goodbyes (Ten16 Press) is about reinventing yourself, learning how to handle loss, and emerging from depression and was honored with the Memoir Magazine’s award for Family/Relationship category as well as one of the 100 notable memoirs from Shelf Media. Other work is featured in The New York Times Magazine, The Boston Globe Magazine, Motherwell, The Brevity Blog, The Boston Parents’ Paper, Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, Talking Writing, The Bark, Cognoscenti, among many regional and national publications. She is the managing editor of The Bucket. She is the mother of two adult daughters, and lives with her husband and two dogs in Cambridge, where she quilts and bakes.

Emptying the Nest: Getting Better at Goodbyes

2024 Independent Press Award Distinguished Favorite

Emptying the Nest: Getting Better at Goodbyes, is about change, identity, and mental health. When Morgan Baker’s daughter, Maggie, left for college and Baker also parted with nine puppies from a litter the family raised, she collapsed into a deep depression. She eventually adjusted and, with a lot of help, did better when her younger daughter left for school. By the time Maggie graduated from college and moved to LA with her boyfriend, Baker was ready. She prepared by focusing on herself, and what she wanted. Her identity shifted. While Baker will always be a nurturer, she is more than a mother.

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Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing