Choosing a Title

The title for enna burning didn’t come as easily as some. I knew I wanted the title to imply fire and sound intriguing. As part of my brainstorming, I did word searches on all of Shakespeare’s plays for something that sounded right. He has so many stunning phrases, but none of them felt quite right for this book.

In the end, my inspiration came from Jane Eyre. There’s a character named Helen Burns who dies of a fever, and I always thought of her name as a sentence: Helen burns. I played with that idea and liked the sound of Enna Burning because the title has a slightly different meaning in all four parts of the book.

Here is the list of titles I considered:

Fire Speaker

Enna Burns

Enna Burning

Tongue of Fire

Burning instead of Beauty (book of Isaiah)

Idle Fire (All’s Well)

Fire Bright (Cymbeline)

Stand on Fire (Cymbeline)

Finger in the Fire (Merry Wives) 

The Spark and Fire (Hamlet) 

Speech of Fire (Hamlet) 

Show of Fire (Julius Caesar) 

All in Fire (Caesar) 

Bear Fire Enough to Kindle (Caesar) 

A Winter’s Fire (Macbeth) 

Rash as Fire (Othello) 

Her Pale Fire (Timon) 

Brief Candle (Macbeth)