An Ordinary Fairy was not the original title of the story. There was no title at all the first few weeks after I started writing, because I couldn't come up with anything I liked. Here's some of the early ideas:
Fairy Friend
Fairy Wood
Fairy House in the Wood
I Mean You No Harm
Pond in the Wood
Orphan Fairy
Fly for Me, Fairy
These all got nixed, especially the ones with the word fairy, since I thought for a while the fact that the main character was a fairy should be a secret until the reader discovered it. More than one proofreader didn't appreciate the surprise, though, so I dropped that idea.
The next batch centered on the name of the main character, Rowan:
Rowan's Pond
Rowan's Wood
Fly for Me, Rowan
On the paper with the list of titles, the last two are circled as the favorites, but I still didn't like the feel. I settled on Rowan's Woods, which felt a little better.
Then one day I was creating a list of fairy names, which I thought should all be botanical, like Rowan, Magnolia, Lily, Rose, and so on. The list grew until the name Willow came to mind. I immediately fell in live with that name and the title became Willow's Woods, which had the flow I was seeking.
Willow's Woods was the title for over a year, until I began to feel it was a little too "soft", I guess you would say. The title didn't convey anything about the story or the main character, besides the fact she owned a woods. I had just read A Probable Future and really liked that title. I went back to thinking of a new title, and then something that Willow says in Chapter Five hit me. She and Noah are talking, and when describing life as a fairy she says:
"Noah, there’s nothing mystical about us or how we live. We just hide in the open among society. We’re just ordinary people. We get married and have kids, we live, we die—”
Voila! Willow herself supplied the title.
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