One of Emily’s nightmares became a painting of a human heart with a knife through it. I wrote that scene… possibly in the first week of NaNoWriMo. It was many many words ago. Then last week I was writing her show at the art gallery and decided to name the painting Heartbreak. Yesterday I was looking through my Rider-Waite deck and made the connection between the painting and the Three of Swords:And so today I decided Emily will make that connection. She has a Tarot reading, so I added in that this card fell to the floor while she was shuffling. She later looks up the card and sees that the meaning is… so of course I have to look up the meaning, since I’m still learning…

She remembered the card that had fallen out while she shuffled. A heart with three swords… the three of swords. She looked in the book to see what it meant. She wasn’t surprised to see that it symbolized sorrow and…
“Heartbreak,” she said to the empty room. “That’s the name of my painting, that’s the only name for it. It’s perfect.

So that’s how she came up with the title of the painting. It’s perfect because this follows the reading, and both scenes come between her creating the painting, and the art gallery scene. It makes perfect sense that this is how she gets the title. I love it!