71 - Who am I?

author n 1 a person who composes a book, article, or other written work. 2 a person who writes books as a profession; writer. 3 an originator or creator.

creator n a person or thing that creates; originator.

novelist n a writer of novels.

storyteller n a person who tells stories.

writer n 1 a person who writes books, articles, etc., esp. as an occupation. 2 the person who has written something specified. 3 a person who is able to write or write well. 4 a scribe or clerk.

Can I say that any of these accurately describe me?

69 - The mind boggles

I love a bit of Boggle. Actually, I love a lot of Boggle. I get the guys over, crack open some beers and play some Boggle. For those that don't know, it's somewhere between Scrabble and a wordsearch. You have 3 minutes to find as many words as possible, but you only get points for words you've found that no-one else has.

Among my friends, I pwn. The secret lies in the 3-letter words. They're only worth 1 point compared to 5 points for a 7-letter word but they're so easy to find. Most 3-letter words can be spelt backwards too or rearranged and, throw an s into the mix to pluralise them all. Most people overlook them. Crackin'.

We played 3 rounds the other day on the super-size cube.
Nick got 41 points.
Matt got 48 points.
I got 75 points.

In fact I got 35 points in round 2 alone. I need to find some more competition.

66 - Words etc. #2

Seeing as there are words I love, it's unsurprising that there are words I loathe too. Strangely enough a lot of these seem to be popping up recently. These are some of them:

eclectic - This is a word that is thrown about with creative magazines. I hate it because it's a word that tells you pretty much nothing but is used constantly in these types of situations. It's a word used to give credence and uniqueness and yet does neither. All it tells us is that this particular creative magazine is a mishmash of various things which is pretty much the least you expect from such a publication.

enthusiastic - This is a word that constantly comes up in job ads and we're probably all guilty of using in cover letters. Point is most people find it hard to be enthusiastic about their job and we're going to fake enthusiasm in order to get a job. It adds nothing.

should of - It's fucking 'should have.' Think about it. If you said, 'I should of gone out' and then went out you wouldn't then say, 'I of been out.'

'adverbs' - I don't hate the word 'adverbs,' I just hate adverbs in general. More specifically I feel they are overused in fiction. 'He slammed the door loudly.' Can you slam a door quietly? 'He whispered quietly.' 'The phone rang suddenly.' 'He raced quickly down the road.'

49 - Is this a spatula or not?

So I was just in the pub with some of my friends and for some reason or the other, we started talking about spatulas. It soon arose that what me and my friends were referring to as spatulas were different things. What they referred to as a spatula is what I'd refer to as a fish slice. See below:What I'd refer to as a spatula they'd never heard of, or at least had no idea what I was describing. I researched this online and apparently this is a cake spatula or a frosting spatula or even a scraper. See below:Only a few hours before this my friend was discussing her gilet with my sister. Now I was ademant that a gilet was a nightdress. But it was quickly pointed out that what I meant was a negligee.

Basically language is a tricky thing. You can use the wrong word and still be understood and you can use the correct word and have people look at you like you're making words up as you go along. So what's right? Should we use words in contexts we understand even if the meaning we ascribe them is wrong?

Probably not. Never mind.

31 - Words etc.

I write. I speak. I read. Words occur a lot in all three of these activities. These are some of my favourites. Gripping.

infallible - I love how this rolls off my tongue, and it rolls off it a lot. It pops up all the time when I'm arguing with myself, aloud. Right.

absolutely - I rarely use this as a synonym for 'totally' or 'completely,' mainly to agree. It's more interesting than saying 'yes' or 'yeah' or 'uhuh' or 'affirmative.' It adds a little bit personality to agreement, if you get what I mean.

cracking - Similar to 'absolutely,' I prefer using this than simply saying 'great,' 'good,' 'excellent' or 'okay.'

meat - I love this because it's vague and specific depending on its usage. Meat pie and meatloaf, fine. 'Is this a meat dish?' Cool. But see a can of Iceland's 'meat curry' and you start to wonder exactly what the hell 'meat' refers to.

facetious - I rarely use this word other than in lists of my favourite words. It's not particularly fun to say, but it has all five vowels in alphabetical order. Whoa.

2 - Frak you

I'm currently watching season 3 of the exceptionally good Battlestar Galactica. Like many US shows, the characters don't say 'fuck' -generally they'll make do with 'damn' or 'shit' or simply nothing. In Battlestar Galactica, however, the writers have come up with an alternative. Instead of saying 'fuck' the characters use the word 'frak' and all variations thereof.

frak off - motherfrker - let's frack - fraked up

Characters use it from the start and we pick up on it quickly. We take it to be an example of semantic shift and although it seems odd at first, it works.

Thing is though, as much as it works, it just doesn't compare with the impact of the real 'fuck.' It's a step closer than shows like 24 or The Shield that have no strong swearing. Shows don't depend on swearing, but a great deal of credibility and believability is lost when all a guy who's just been double-crossed and left for dead can say is 'damn.'

Take The Wire. The characters swear in The Wire, a lot. One particular scene, one of the great scenes of TV history, has our two heroes Bunk and McNulty investigating an old crime scene. This scene is the best part of ten minutes long and literally all Bulk and McNulty say throughout is 'fuck' or variations thereof. It shouldn't really work, but it does. It's a powerful, indulgent scene that says so much more than a lot of crime procedural waffle.

I'd like to analyse this scene but I'm sure there are already many essays out there on it written by people with greater insight and verbal dexterity than me. So I just want to remind everyone who's watched The Wire of that scene. I just want you to remember watching it for the first time. I want you to smile as you reminisce. I want a shiver to run through you as I'm sure it ran through you nearly every time you watched an episode of The Wire. For anyone who hasn't watched it - you must, if just for that scene.

1 - Evolution, of a sort

I’m failing to get any further with redrafting my novel at the moment and yet I’m somehow alive with a huge compulsion to write. I think it’s simply that I want to be writing new things. That’s why I’ve joined One A Day. I won’t go into the details, suffice it to say the aim is to write one blog a day for a year. It seems fitting to kick start the process by writing about writing itself.

What I love about writing most is that it’s an organic process, constantly evolving and transforming until it becomes something so very different from what you started out with that you forget how you got there. I can generally remember where a single idea for a story originated from, but most of the finer points are lost in the annals of my mind.

I know that when I was writing a piece I made conscious decisions. I know when I was writing a piece I was influenced by what I was reading, watching and listening to at the time. I know that when I was writing a piece I did some things by accident and they just stuck.

Sometimes I wish I could tear apart every little detail of a story and see why this is this, even if it’s for the most banal reasons – such as the time I made a character obsequious simply because I came across the word and liked it.

I started writing a piece yesterday. It’s a truncated form of a novella idea I’ve been toying with for some months and for some reason that I have already forgotten, I have started writing it in a garbled, semi-phonetic version of English.

I’ve clearly taken direction from A Clockwork Orange, Riddley Walker and 1984’s Newspeak but I’m sure I wasn’t consciously paying homage to/ripping off these pieces when I started. Now I’ve got to such an involved level with this language that I can’t stop.

I know I’m alienating any audience by making the piece tougher to read. I know it adds little if anything to the story. Worst of all, I’m finding it hard letting go. The language is evolving every time I return to the piece. I’m deciding on specific spellings and new rules, but I guess that’s the basis for an entire other blog. I just wish I could remember why I thought it was a good idea.