Writer To Go

Words and ideas, notes and scribbles, shared by Mykl. Freelancer writer and editor, on the go. Occasional doodler. Have office. Will travel!

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advice to nonfiction writers on podcasts:

Do not script your answers! Just have a conversation, like you would with a buddy in your field or your brother who knows nothing about this subject.

(I see you there, hands on your keyboard. Just stop that, now! You know who you are.)

advice to podcast hosts:

Do not provide your questions in advance, or writers will painstakingly craft their ultimately bloodless answers.

seriously:

If you're going to write your answers, then shut up and post that to a blog. Talk shows should be conversational and unscripted.

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sometimes, the only thing better than a standing ovation is a room full of silence

Bobby Lefebre, Colorado Poet Laureate

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If a significant percentage of your headlines include words like "Fear" or "Terror", you should have a serious talk with whoever writes those.

[kikenhanna17world]

“Collect books, even if you don’t plan on reading them right away. Nothing is more important than an unread library.” ― John Waters

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[as quoted by Austin Kleon in Steal Like an Artist]

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etymology of the day:

The English stole "camouflage" from the French, a variation of their word for disguise (camoufler), which they'd borrowed from Italian (camuffare), a mashup of their word for head (capo) + Latin for muff (muffla). So, the original meaning was "head muff".

I love that etymology demonstrates how we humans can never leave well enough alone.

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phrase of the day:

"brachiosaurus puke crater"

[as illustrated in the book 'Dinosaurs Without Bones' by Anthony J Martin]

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English borrows words from so many languages. And when we anglophones assimilate this vocabulary, sometimes it is with respect for the original pronunciation or spelling, sometimes without, while other times we split the difference. If you aren't mispronouncing words on the regular, you aren't reading enough.

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I love serials that will just kill major characters — dead — with no comin' back from it. Once readers and viewers realize that no character is "safe", there's real suspense in all situations.

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adventure

noun

Shit going wrong, in an unfamiliar location.

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Both jokes and fiction may contain falsehoods without being lies.

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I required expert* help to write just 5 words in Japanese:

黙れ! グーグルそれ さぁ、行け!

Any native 5-year-old speaks more grammatically than this dodgy senryū. Nor has it the lyrical lilt to mask crude syntax. All this is my own fault. Of course, it would help if I actually knew Japanese. But living up to my eyeballs in my native tongue is why translating just 5 words and 3 short phrases from English highlighted multiple and wide differences in grammar between these disparate languages.

For those wondering what those words say, but too lazy to paste them into Google Translate, the original English was a snarky comment directed at discussion group users asking very basic questions whose answers they could more quickly find themselves:

Zip it! Google that. Now, go.

(The translation is not word for word, as this English seemed rather idiomatic.)

As always, even my English poetry proves that I am a prose writer.

:)

BTW, I'm also a very capable researcher — something to keep in mind, especially if you're too busy to do your own!

Have internet, will search! **

__________ * Encourage your children to attend university. It pays off! :) ** Yes, my research skills extend well beyond a quick Google search.

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The failure to “listen” is not limited to words spoken.

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About half the misunderstandings I notice online are the result of people failing to accurately write what they are trying to convey, with most others caused or exaggerated by careless reading comprehension.

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Without language, our vicarious life would be an impoverished fog.

Without words — the ideas built then communicated with them — we talking apes would be long extinct.

Whatever we know of language, the consciousness of speech, we acquired reading and listening to others — then playing with these blocks to build little houses.

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sequacious

adjective

intellectually servile.

Formed from the Latin sequac-, or sequax (which means "inclined to follow" and comes from sequi, "to follow") and the English -ious. The original and now archaic meaning of sequacious was "inclined to follow" or "subservient." Although that meaning might as easily describe someone who willingly dropped into line behind a war leader, or who was unusually compliant or obedient in any sense, the concept gradually narrowed into the image of someone who blindly adopts ideas without much thought. Labeling a person sequacious is not very complimentary, and implies a slavish willingness to adopt a thought or opinion.

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the most intriguing phrase I read all weekend:

leaving behind a letter in a boot by a local watering hole giving an account of the expedition

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“Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life.”

- Giorgos Seferis