What to Name My Novel

Normally I have to struggle to come up with names. Some people name their cars. Mine is just “the Honda.”Some people are quick to pin a label on others. My husband could look at someone, and instantly
come up with a nickname for them that was spot on. I, on the other hand, spent weeks agonizing what to call our dog before finally giving up and keeping his old name. (Lucky came pre-named when he adopted us when he was middle aged.) So
I normally should have had trouble deciding what to call my first novel. 
Fortunately, that wasn't the case.

My novel is a fictional memoir of a 32-year-old wife and mother who grew up with two schizophrenic parents. Schizophrenia is a devastating mental illness that tends to run in families. If a person has a parent with the disease, they have about a 25 percent chance of developing it themselves. If someone has two parents with the disease, that number goes up to about 50 percent. My protagonist is well aware she's at risk, and that concern haunts her even after she passes the ages when it normally manifests itself. Despite that, she's still obsessively terrified of developing schizophrenia, and even more worried that she may have passed along the genetics for the disease to one or both of her children.

I did a tremendous amount of research on mental illness before I sat down to start writing my novel, and I was struck at how universal those fears are among children of schizophrenics. Many people in that position are afraid to risk having children. So was my protagonist. Having children, I've always thought, is taking a big leap of faith and hoping the roll of the dice comes up favorably and your child is born healthy. The roll of the dice is much more chancy for those who may carrying the chromosomes that lead to a devastating disorder. So while I was working on my novel, I gave the book the working title Playing the Genetic Lottery.

The working title seemed so appropriate to me that I don't even recall when I came up with it. So when I was finished, and preparing the book for publication, I saw no need to change it. Playing the Genetic Lottery is one of the few names that I didn't have to struggle to come up with. It just seemed to fit perfectly and convey what the book is about.