Hello, writers. This is the penultimate Write On! of DaKoWriMo, and the last one before… Uh, something that happens tomorrow. I can’t seem to remember what, for the moment. But never mind that. This is supposed to be a happy occasion. Let’s not bicker and argue over who killed who…
(Ahem. Who killed whom.)
What follows is a brief meditation on the artful use of language.
Sometimes I feel a bit self-conscious about my writing. Like, whenever I’m writing. Or reading what I’ve written. And one of the things that gets me is how clumsily I often use the language, and how artfully others use it. At least, that’s the way it seems to me. And two of the areas I feel inadequate about are word choices and phrasing.
When I’m reading what others write, I often find myself remarking that they’ve used just the right word, but one I never would have thought to reach for. Sometimes they veer into purple prose (which SenSho wrote about back in October), such as in “Moon-Face” when Jack London describes John Claverhouse’s laughter as his “plaguey cachinnations,” but in “Local Color” when he describes a character as “not indifferently schooled,” or a suit “with the pockets draggled from the freightage of many books,” I stop and ask myself if I would ever have thought of writing “indifferently,” “draggled,” or “freightage,” and I sadly reply, “No, probably not.”
In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” King expresses doubt that the election of a new mayor “will bring the millennium to Birmingham.” Is it only because I’m not a cleric that I wouldn’t have thought to use “millennium” in that sense, or is it a too literal turn of mind that just wouldn’t think of using the word for anything other than a period of time? When he later writes of his disappointment in church leaders who “have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows,” I note with happiness the felicitous usage of “anesthetizing” and with sadness the unlikelihood of my ever so using it.
I am hoping that by becoming more aware of these jewels as I read them that I will be more likely to employ ones of similar cut and clarity in my own writing, but I don’t know if that’ll work. I’m eager to hear your comments below on the subject, and any sources of inspiration you have for artistry in prose.
(The Jack London stories mentioned are from Moon-Face and Other Stories, which I read last year, and which can be had for free on Project Gutenberg.)
First, let’s get a little bit of business out of the way, then on to tonight’s challenge!
Current Write On calendar:
Jan. 26. strawbale
Feb. 2 mettle fatigue
Feb. 9 SensibleShoes
Feb. 16 ______________
Feb. 23 ______________
Mar. 2 ???
DaKoWriMo
I’m so thrilled so many of you are doing this! You’re all wonderful, and you’re an inspiration to me.
AjaxFortune— finish 1st draft of a story, almost done
annieli— outlining new book project
bonetti— revising heavily more parts of Camp NaNoWriMo work
cfk — Writing a second diary every once in a while besides Bookflurries-Bookchat, as a commitment to the community to help all of us with sanity. [Find them at cfk-posting-history here.]
Crimson Quillfeather— GOAL:30k words on novel revision. Sofar 1st chptr 15thou words revised.
Deejay Lyn— final check & 75 pgs of proofing of YA novel done & sent to agent, revising another novel [through 7 chapters], beta-reading a friend’s middle grade novel that’s under contract and coming out in spring 2018.
dconrad— Reviewed November project, write or revise 10k words, 25% done
Eihenetu— revise 2 essays & submit for publication, & complete 2 chapters of memoir
James Wells — Get unstuck with The Eternal Moment (Volume II of The Great Symmetry) and add at least 15k words.
mettle fatigue— will settle for writing anything to do with fiction: so far, that’s WriteOn diaries Jan 12 & Feb 2 done, 1 for DvarTorah for Jan 21 done that includes mythology so that’s sort of fiction-like.
MT Spaces— finish writing a review of Memoirs on Mime for All Time [Done, yay!]. Next: writing a simple letter to Mamako in Internet Japanese.
not a lamb— 10k of science, 10k of fiction
quarkstomper— get back to writing “Ones You Didn’t Hear In Sunday School” series; finish the scene-in-progress in Dune project
Richard Cranium— write anything over 1000 words
RiveroftheWest— hist’l rsrch for data & illos well in prog., corr’d/rev’d 1st 5 chs w/1thou wds added to prev. 24thou of them, out of 39,355 of all chs, now 40,355 — aim to add apprx 25thou more based on expanded outline.
SensibleShoes— add 35k words to work in progress and revise old manuscript [Added 1100 words, wrote 4,000 words of editorial notes]
shaso— outline/worldbuild a fantasy novel
strawbale— finish the rewrite on first two sections. Install new breed of cactus under characters. Write to my Senators at least once this month too (Done!). And a good diary for the 26th, of course. Making some progress now on section 1.
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker— Revised 4 stories to date, 60 pages, of unfinished sections of novel-in-short-stories.
terry pinder— Reach 30k words in work-in-progress
traceycox— organized unfinished work [95 pieces of poetry] & writing 28 lines split between 2 new sonnets. 5 lines down, 23 to go.
Wee Mama- finish the science half of The Garden of the Soul
In the immortal words of Young Mr. Grace, “You’ve all done very well!”
Next week will be the last diary during DaKoWriMo and then on February 2 we can all lick our wounds and compare notes and celebrate having put all that behind us.
All right, on with the challenge!
Well… not so fast. First I want to say a few words:
Cock-a-bendy! Imperial shag! Sexagesm!
On the subject of word choices, there is a wonderful web site, Twitter account, and YouTube channel called Haggard Hawks which features obscure words. They have a lovely video on words that sound rude but really aren’t:
Examples include:
- cock-a-bendy, a rude, self-important little man
- titbow, a heat haze or shimmering mirage
- panshit, a commotion or state of excitement or panic
- bumfiddler, someone who spoils or invalidates a document
- bumbailiff, a bailiff of the meanest kind
- butt-shaft, a target arrow without a barb
- sexangle, a hexagon (adj., sexangular)
- skiddy-cock, the water rail, Rallus aquaticus, a bird with brown and slate-grey plumage
- assapanick, a flying squirrel, family Sciuridae
- fanny-blower, a type of fan used in the scissor grinding industry
There are more in the video, including the imperial shag and sexagesm.
They also have a lovely video of 10 words from Shakespeare that no one can work out:
A word that is only used once in a corpus is called a hapax legomenon, from the Greek meaning ‘single word,’ and when an author or even the entire surviving corpus of an ancient language only uses a word once it is essentially impossible to figure out what was meant by it.
Ten of them from Shakespeare are pajock, armgaunt, ribaudred, eftest, impeticos, ‘in his buttons’, insisture, cock-a-hoop, wappened, and pioned. I’m not going to try to describe them here; watch the video for such explanation as may be from Paul Anthony Jones.
Okay, now on with the challenge!
Tonight’s challenge:
Tonight’s challenge is to write a 200 word story using one word selected from each list: the not-rude words and Shakespeare’s mystery words (or, at your option, some other obscure, recondite, or even made-up words) and, particularly for the bard’s word, see if you can suggest some meaning for it. Your story may include a callow youth and his or her stout companion, along with any concomitant Jewels and Grebes, at your discretion.
Write On! will be a regular Thursday night feature until it isn’t. Before signing a contract with any agent or publisher, please be sure to check them out on Preditors and Editors, Absolute Write and/or Writer Beware.
