I’ve been trying to come up with a decent title for the novel I’m revising ever since it came back from the Writing Show makeover contest labelled “Untitled”. I felt sad for my poor manuscript and resolved to come up with a better title. Not having much experience with titling novels, after I’d decided on something that seemed to sound OK to me (sorry, it’s a secret), I wondered if someone in the magical world of the internet had come up with a site where you could test out your titles.

Of course they had. I quickly found the Lulu Titlescorer page, which uses data from New York Times bestsellers of the last 50 years to decide what chance your title has of making your book a bestseller. Now, far be it from me to imagine that the content of the book should also have something to do with this, but let’s humour them and try it out.

On the site, you have to type in your title, as well as answer a few questions about the its grammatical make up. Click the magic button and – whammo, the official result for my current working title is that it has a 51.4% chance of being a bestselling title! I played around a little by throwing in some titles from actually bestselling books and they came out around 40%, so I must be on a winner. Now I just need a site to finish writing the book for me, too.

It was no flippant thought that had me subtitling this blog with the phrase “a whole lot of procrastination”. Heck, I’d probably have published three or four novels (fingers crossed, talent-permitting) if I was good at working hard. But just like last year when I threw myself into the chaos of NaNoWriMo at the last minute, I decided this week to give myself another stupidly ambitious target that I just might be able to meet.

For as long as I can remember, it’s been my dream to enter a novel in the Australian/Vogel Literary Award. In case you’re not as obsessed with this contest as I am, it’s a prize for unpublished novels written by Australians under the age of 35. More than a few of my favourite authors have found success with a Vogel win, like Andrew McGahan with Praise and Kate Grenville’s The Secret River, and this year the total prize money has increased to $50,000.

Obviously, the age limit is a big consideration for me. I’ve got this year and then two more when I’ll still be eligible to enter (they cut off the age at 31 May, the due date for entries). I give myself extremely long odds of impressing any judges this year, but there’s always that off chance, and most importantly, this is the kind of goal I need to finish the rewrite of my first novel.

I’ve been chipping away at this rewrite over the past couple of months, but last night I sat down to get a more concrete restructuring for most of it. I think knowing where it’s going – or more to the point, not knowing – has been one of the demotivating factors that’s meant I haven’t spent as much time on it as I’d like to. After getting my paid blogs out of the way today, I’ve got the rest of today and then an entire day tomorrow to make a big chunk of progress. And then another few weeks to get it really finished off before – I really hope – I mail in a completed, revised, polished manuscript before May 31. After doing NaNoWriMo last November I’m actually able to believe I can do this – it’s a smaller job than that was. Send me good writing vibes, please!