The Word-Love

This morning I got a hankering to blog about my love-o-words. I'm a writer, it goes without saying, right? Probably.

A simple post-twenty minutes tops. Or, it should have been, anyone who reads my blog knows that nothing ever runs smoothly for me. :D (Which just comes with being a parent, I'm going to assume).

So far this morning I have had three false starts. Yes, a cartoon called "Chuggington" for background noise caused my distraction the first time, now I have music playing softly in my ears. Then a crying, overtired boy who doesn't want to be in bed, but has no other choice, because he decided to wake up at three o'clock this morning and have an intellectual conversation with Mommy about tornadoes and weather, has turned the lightest of issues into the death of an imaginary friend (or what it would be like). I've since calmed him down, and got him to lie down for a little while. Just to rest (bc sleeping is the worst punishment in the world for my kids).

The funny thing is that upon my third attempt, I found stumbling words, my hankering long gone, the easy flow of fabulous evaporated to the place where unwritten words go. (Does anyone know? I haven't figured it out just yet. My two wavering ideals are either they hop from brain to brain until someone uses them, or they turn into Muse dust). And so the reason for the actual ramble of this post is because I remembered things seem to flow easier if I follow an actual train of thought than trying to force anything.

Hence the "fun" fumbling anecdote of nothing quite important, but still somewhat pertinent for the development of this post. (heh, you should see the first couple of drafts from my stories...)

A few months ago while I was reading POETS AND WRITERS magazine they spoke of a fabulous little word site called WORDNIK. It's cute, new and interesting. While I don't recall everything the article said about it, I do remember that where some sites only have a capacity for a certain number of words, Wordnik has an obscene amount. (Again, the numbers have dissuaded me)A little blurb from the "About" page...

**Traditional dictionaries make you wait until they've found what they consider to be "enough" information about a word before they will show it to you. Wordnik knows you don't want to wait—if you're interested in a word, we're interested too!

By "information," we don't just mean traditional definitions (although we have plenty of those)! This information could be:

* An example sentence—we have tons of examples and gobs of other data for most words. But even if we've only found one sentence, we'll show it to you. And we'll show you where it came from.
* Related words: not just synonyms and antonyms, but words that are used in the same contexts. Cheeseburger, milkshake, and doughnut aren't synonyms, but they show up in the same kinds of sentences.
* Images tagged by our friends at Flickr: want to know what a pout looks like? We'll show you.
* Statistics: how rare is tintinnabulation? Well, we think you'll see it only about once a year. Smile? You might see that word many times, every day.
* An audio pronunciation—and you can record your own!
* Something YOU tell us! Use the "Comments" and "Contribute" links to tell us something—anything—about a word.


Does that mean that there can be something in the definition that isn't kosher? Maybe, but I haven't seen any inconsistencies yet. Check it out when you get the time.

Learning new words gets me geeked. I enjoy it, and I was curious to see what other resources everyone else uses as well. Let me know if you're feeling generous. My word-o-the-day emails consist of one from Merriam-Webster, and the other from WordNik. They have entomology, different meanings, and pronunciations. Which is always fun. The best ones, or the ones that strike my fancy the most go into my "favorites" list, (a handmade list that holds such words as chrysalis, mirth, casket, valise, noetic, macabre...etc), along with my daily word fix, I also frequent Thesaurus/dictonary.com (which also contains a translator and an encyclopedia), and a rhyming dictionary at the ready. (Plus, The Bookshelf Muse does great things with descriptions along with The Non-Verbal Dictionary)

I supposed it goes without saying that I love word games (ie. Scrabble, crossword puzzles), and I make up my own words too (I think every writer does that tho, it comes from the creative part of us. jazziment, synopsisize, publishment... etc, nothing fancy, just play, if you will).

And I also have four dictionaries (one - the twenty pound, unabridged 2001 Webster dictionary), two thesauri, and three foreign language dictionaries (Russian, Italian and Gaelic).

I prefer the term multi-faceted abnormal, thank you very much. I'm a word-geek and I'm proud of it!

The Dirty Comments....

LOL, every time I hit a certain number of comments I get these wonderful "remarks" in Chinese. Of course, it's spam. So I'm going to figure out how to use a slight moderation. I'm not a firm believer against porn, the comments are easy enough to ignore(that's what the delete key is for), everyone has a right to see or do whatever they wish. I just don't want it on my blog. At first they were little blurbs. Out of curiosity, I translated them through Google. Now, the blurb gods have grown angry with my delete key. They've turned lengthy and into advertisements for their videos or photos.

From this: "Life is a walk in moonlight."

to "Romantic moonlight forum 85cc adult movie area pastes a movie area Yuan really crisp yellow movie night of chatroom night of sentiment video Internet forum night of fervor chatroom one-to-many beautiful woman video one-to-one video one-to-one video to chat clearly the one-to-one video spicy younger sister video and music video chatroom sweetheart treasure direct seeding to paste the piece to play the beautiful woman person video net beautiful woman short film free to take a look at the video to make friends net 50024 rainbow avdvdsex888 free to look that movie Asia Asia dvd the disc hundred matter free av video chats the net free on-line aa piece to take a look at 85CCsex to paste piece net s383 sentiment color clathria ka ripe female autodyne sex free adult movie situation work place happy thing video swim suit Xiu to develop the net to make friends the free adult movie, 104 free becomeThe human sentiment color literature novel video anchor escapes clothes Xiu gogo2sexplus28 forum Mick to synthesize the forum chatroom to make friends av adult net g8mm middle video bad friend forum video beautiful woman msvt the person chatroom video net to like the chatroom network help handing over 168 forum spicy younger sisters to paste the chart Hsinchu help to hand over the 38ga piece to download the national biggest club ok video, video hot dance Xiu"

No offense to the woman trying to make money, but they can do it somewhere else. My blog isn't a freeway for their ventures anymore.

The Workload

I've never posted goals on my blog. Then this past week hit me, I haven't written ANYTHING for my WIP in two months (seriously!?! it took me five weeks to get the rough draft out!) I've been plodding away at short stories and poems or not writing at all. I became very sad, but then I realized maybe my novel characters are hiding behind my short story characters.

What I have set for myself is a challenge of sorts, last week I started revising my short stories and tinkering with the loose ends of my poetry (they are no good to me sitting around, unfinished in their folders) after those are done, I believe I will find my novel again.

So far this week I've revised two short stories and I'm moving onto my third one today. I'm still in the learning process, but it's been a true delight for me to sit back and examine the finish products of my hard work. Honestly, I was afraid I let them "sit" for too long. But now that I'm back at them, I'm tickled with the results and I'm finding that maybe too long is just long enough.

I am going to post my workload onto my blog to track my progress. I believe this will help be keep going so I can get back to my WIP, because I miss it so.

My current workload: (titles are always subject to change)

Short stories:

Season's End - 2770 DONE!
The Gardner - ?
Idle Parts - 2615 first draft down.
Candy - ?

Poems:

Faceless(previously named - Memories Untold) -done!
Confusable Mess
Bound -- Done!
Little Blue Pill - DONE!!
The Shelf
Black Nest - done!!
Borrowed Flesh

Not too bad, now that I look at it. However, new ideas are popping up every time I turn the corner. I hope that I can keep them at bay until I finish these latest revisions.

Next week I hope to set word goals for my WIP, I'm ready to get cracking on it - she's stewed for long enough.

The Quest - part 1

In December, I put myself on a quest to start digging into all things horror(know your roots, I always say.) I have found my first leg over and I couldn't be more pleased. I sat down with Bram Stoker and read his beautifully written, albeit somewhat meaty, vampire story DRACULA.

I loved it. Stoker's descriptions and imagery conveyed each spangled scene vividly. I was sucked into each journal entry. You may be asking yourself why I hadn't read it previously, seeing as I work in a bookstore and now, I write horror. *Shrugs* Cause then I couldn't have read it now.

It was an extra door for me to break into, yes. But I wouldn't have it any other way.

I have seen many, many different vampire inspired movies, I knew the plot for the book so I wasn't too surprised. Then, I went back old school. In the book, UNIVERSAL MONSTERS, they speak of Bela Lugosi. While my knowledge of him prior was based of off the movie ED WOOD, I decided to dig a little deeper. Renting Dracula was by far the highlight of my quest-starting experience. He had played Dracula in New York, and his voice was considered perfect for the vampiric role. However he was not the first choice for the movie. Luck and charm eventually won out for him.

Yes, things are much different with movies now, and it would never fly. But it is the birth of horror movies in the United States. I was tickled with the black and white (which I do love) and everything the story encompassed.

The things the actors used to put themselves through with the make-up alone is horrifying enough to think about. But it was a beautiful piece of work and I'm better for having seen it.

Next, I'm onto Frankenstein. Mary Shelly wrote that book and submitted it for a contest at a time when women weren't really considered able. I'm a little jazzed about this one too!

Of course, when it comes to horror; ie. Gross, twisted, nasty, gnarled stuff always has a good place in my heart.