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 Words

I never seem to have a lack of words to write or to speak.

While I get inspiration from all walks of life, a poem or a nightmare too real to ignore, it's never difficult for me to get the words out of my head and into my computer.

That being said, I am having a slump of sorts.

I have plenty of ideas bumping around my noggin. I get them out before they blow away and find another willing to turn it into a proper story. The problem is turning them into something sensible. I'm not trying not to pressure myself but to be honest, the stack of unfinished work I have is going to topple over and crush me. Killed-dead, by a pile of my own thoughts (of course that end is somewhat appropriate for a writer....)

Every day I sit and look at the words, or a blank screen trying to take on a fresh start for my stories and honestly even though the words keep coming, they don't form a complete plot.

There are many different avenues for me to cruise down of course. I can keep picking away at the stories and then when I finally figure out what's the what, I can start for real, but most of my ideas start in an awkward place.

I need more backstory, frontstory, or I miss the interesting parts all together. My first WIP was a complete history of my characters before I pulled out the meaty bits, and realized what they were trying to tell me.

However, now I'm faced with my problem at hand, and while I'm not going so far as to call it a block (because I've proven to myself that I'm not blocked in the slightest) I'm trying to figure out why these plots are so coy with me. I'm not worried, just at an impasse. I know they will come when they come and I'll keep writing until they do (I spent too much time *not* writing to do otherwise.)

Unfortunately this slump couldn't have happened at a worse time. Shock Totem is having their monthly flash fiction contest and while I have the frame for my story, nothing else is following. I keep trying though, I'm not one to give up, I had hoped that this little challenge would jog something back into place. Now I just have to have something of substance by midnight, Sunday. I'll get some kick ass feedback and I'd love to keep growing.

For now I invite the words to keep coming... but can I get a bit flesh for my plot as well? Please?