I admit it, I'm a geek. A math geek, a language geek... especially a language geek. Words are my first love (with typesetting and printing a very close second).
I read my encyclopedia, I read my dictionaries and I have been known (as I posted to a friend today) to quote from the American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. I was delighted to find this -- while looking for something else entirely -- the origin of the word "dude" in Slate.com. (November 2013) "Dude" is a variant of Yankee Doodle: "...to call foppish young men of New York City 'doods' with the alternate spelling 'dudes' soon becoming the norm."
Read the full story here.
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Cringe-Worthy Writing
Life on an island, yes indeed. One storm after another this week, I believe we are on storm five of five. The last one brought gusts of seventy-five miles an hour, we look out hourly to make sure the boats are still on their moorings.
I pulled a long list of posts down because -- ta-da! -- they were part of my own manuscript, which is now with an editor. Now it looks like I haven't written a thing since last May. (sigh)
Several years ago a teacher friend sent me a stack student stories for review, the top contenders for entry in a high school student writing contest. Two stories were excellent, stories in a young person's "voice": an interesting perspective on a divorce (not the writer's parents, who had already divorced and remarried); a comedy about going on vacation with an extended family. Others were pretty good, needed editing, were too long or strayed into cliche, pretty common stuff for writers.
One of those stories recently came back around: in the first iteration, the author was clearly a young person trying to write like they were much older, perhaps a rite of passage for all writers. Every writer I've met will admit that when they were sixteen or twenty-three that they tried to write a decades-sweeping epic of love against a backdrop of war, or three generations of women held together by a protagonist with a will of iron... I have one of those manuscripts buried in a drawer and pull it out every so often and cringe. I knew nothing at all about being alive, but I sure thought I did.
This young author hadn't lived long enough to write realistically about a battle-hardened soldier in a combat zone who contemplates his life, tries to commit suicide and is brought back to reality by his best friend. The writing was pretty good, but full of gratuitous gunfire, cliches, stilted dialogue.
Recently I reviewed a video of a workshop for a film in progress that seemed quite familiar. I took a look at the filmmaker's name -- it was the same young person, now in college. The story had become screenplay and the workshop presentation featured actors too young and inexperienced to pull off the script. I suggested he find experienced actors to run his lines.
And lo! He did, I got video of the most recent workshop with a mix of actors, old and young. The protagonist had changed from a man to a woman. She was contemplating suicide was because of -- it was suggested but not stated outright -- sexual harassment and rape.
Holy Guacamole, now there was a script! I sent back comments and said get the film into production. I also asked if he had a female collaborator. He said yes, a woman in his film class had made a suggestion and he asked her to re-write parts of the script. He was starting a Kickstarter campaign...
... but I haven't heard anything else, hoping to see more...
I pulled a long list of posts down because -- ta-da! -- they were part of my own manuscript, which is now with an editor. Now it looks like I haven't written a thing since last May. (sigh)
****
Several years ago a teacher friend sent me a stack student stories for review, the top contenders for entry in a high school student writing contest. Two stories were excellent, stories in a young person's "voice": an interesting perspective on a divorce (not the writer's parents, who had already divorced and remarried); a comedy about going on vacation with an extended family. Others were pretty good, needed editing, were too long or strayed into cliche, pretty common stuff for writers.
One of those stories recently came back around: in the first iteration, the author was clearly a young person trying to write like they were much older, perhaps a rite of passage for all writers. Every writer I've met will admit that when they were sixteen or twenty-three that they tried to write a decades-sweeping epic of love against a backdrop of war, or three generations of women held together by a protagonist with a will of iron... I have one of those manuscripts buried in a drawer and pull it out every so often and cringe. I knew nothing at all about being alive, but I sure thought I did.
This young author hadn't lived long enough to write realistically about a battle-hardened soldier in a combat zone who contemplates his life, tries to commit suicide and is brought back to reality by his best friend. The writing was pretty good, but full of gratuitous gunfire, cliches, stilted dialogue.
Recently I reviewed a video of a workshop for a film in progress that seemed quite familiar. I took a look at the filmmaker's name -- it was the same young person, now in college. The story had become screenplay and the workshop presentation featured actors too young and inexperienced to pull off the script. I suggested he find experienced actors to run his lines.
And lo! He did, I got video of the most recent workshop with a mix of actors, old and young. The protagonist had changed from a man to a woman. She was contemplating suicide was because of -- it was suggested but not stated outright -- sexual harassment and rape.
Holy Guacamole, now there was a script! I sent back comments and said get the film into production. I also asked if he had a female collaborator. He said yes, a woman in his film class had made a suggestion and he asked her to re-write parts of the script. He was starting a Kickstarter campaign...
... but I haven't heard anything else, hoping to see more...
Sunday, July 28, 2013
Silver Dollar Sam
Uncle Ah Sing; which is a pretend name, sort of like calling someone "Mister Mister". He went by many, many names: Ah Sam, Silver Dollar Sam, China Sam, Indian Sam. I met him the same summer or summers that my dad and I traveled the San Juans with a group of Lummi men who were searching out and mapping shell middens. I'm not sure if this was one summer or two: it was around the time my dad and I went to see Celilo Falls before they were flooded. (1956 or 1957?)
He lived mostly in Canada as an adult; never married. If he was in his teens in 1870 as he said he was, he was nearly one hundred years old when I met him; and that seems entirely possible. He was quite tall for our family -- a little over six feet. He said he came to the USA when he was about twelve -- he was already big for his age, never went to school, started working right away as a dishwasher in Seattle. He knew Chin Chun Hock and a few of the really early Chinese settlers in Seattle -- and in Olympia. Though most people don't know it, the early history of Olympia is essentially a history of the Chinese families and especially the Locke family.
We visited Uncle in Vancouver's Chinatown before the island trip; he gave me a silver dollar, talked with dad about places he'd been. I got the impression that he and dad were not related by blood, but by village birth.
Uncle worked on the Union Pacific and then on the Northern Pacific he said he was a blaster; no way to verify except that a couple of his paper sons and grandsons were munitions experts and World War I and II.
Between railroad jobs he worked lots of odd jobs; he often traveled with the Samish or Saanich or both; and perhaps the Lummi too. He was rumored to have an Indian common-law wife; haven't been able find info on that. Among his many odd jobs were digging a ditch on Waldron and working in the lime kilns on San Juan, though not in Roche Harbor, I'm guessing the Eureka Lime Co. site, that would fit his timeline. He did a lot of work with loggers all over the islands and around Bellingham but not always logging; I'm guessing he was a cook.
He also ran traplines in Alaska, worked the fisheries up there, was disgusted with the gold rush...
Monday, May 27, 2013
Harbor Stories - Introduction
I grew up in Grays Harbor, Aberdeen, to be precise. The south side of Aberdeen, to be even more precise, a couple of blocks from the Chehalis River, in a neighborhood of houses with no basements because the Chehalis went over its banks at least once a year and flooded the streets. The combination of big rain and an ultra-high tide would do it; we could look at a tide chart and know just about when it would flood. As the water rose, all the stuff under our houses would float out: bits of wood and fabric, Wonder Bread wrappers, insulation, dead cats and mice, discarded toys and headless dolls.
I remember a family of beavers swimming down the street one year. My dad would tie our crayon-green rowboat to the front steps and we'd row around in three feet of water.
For the record, yes I know the house where Kurt Cobain lived. Yes, I know the places he wrote about and no, I didn't know him, I was long gone from the Harbor before his family arrived. And yes, the Harbor really is a gray and drizzly place all year 'round, almost perfectly temperate when I was a kid with very few sunny days but also very few really cold days. I can remember entire summers when there were maybe a couple weeks of semi-sunny weather. The result? I am slightly distrustful of too many sunny days in a row.
Grays Harbor -- or just "the Harbor" was the first of many harbors, bays, sounds, ports, and inlets that I lived in (literally, in boats and houseboats) and still live on. Years ago I started writing about them, and now I have several bulging folders (real and digital) of stories; places and people that I've collected into a series called -- not surprisingly -- "Harbor Stories".
It's kick creating a amalgamation of everywhere I've lived and visited and populating it with people that I can't make nearly as quirky as the people I meet. I include myself in the "quirky" category. The best I can do is to combine quirks.
To make it all work I've created a fictional place; Salmon Bay, which just recently renamed itself, much like how the Queen Charlotte Islands are now Haida Gwaii. I've had to draw a map of my fictional place so I can keep track of where everyone's comings and goings.
The nifty thing about a blog is that I can post character sketches and such to see what to look like "in print" before integrating them into the book. It's a humbling experience: I think I've got a sparkling character only to see him or her fall flat after being filtered through the blog.
About Salmon Bay--
Salmon Bay has one store/gas station: the Mercantile, called the "Merc" by everyone because the "antile" fell off the sign in 1952 and was never replaced. There are tribal offices, a school, a post office, a harbor with four docks, mostly filled with crab and fishing boats. There are five churches and four taverns: the religious folks feel they have the edge on the drunks.
More about the Merc next week.
I remember a family of beavers swimming down the street one year. My dad would tie our crayon-green rowboat to the front steps and we'd row around in three feet of water.
For the record, yes I know the house where Kurt Cobain lived. Yes, I know the places he wrote about and no, I didn't know him, I was long gone from the Harbor before his family arrived. And yes, the Harbor really is a gray and drizzly place all year 'round, almost perfectly temperate when I was a kid with very few sunny days but also very few really cold days. I can remember entire summers when there were maybe a couple weeks of semi-sunny weather. The result? I am slightly distrustful of too many sunny days in a row.
Grays Harbor -- or just "the Harbor" was the first of many harbors, bays, sounds, ports, and inlets that I lived in (literally, in boats and houseboats) and still live on. Years ago I started writing about them, and now I have several bulging folders (real and digital) of stories; places and people that I've collected into a series called -- not surprisingly -- "Harbor Stories".
It's kick creating a amalgamation of everywhere I've lived and visited and populating it with people that I can't make nearly as quirky as the people I meet. I include myself in the "quirky" category. The best I can do is to combine quirks.
To make it all work I've created a fictional place; Salmon Bay, which just recently renamed itself, much like how the Queen Charlotte Islands are now Haida Gwaii. I've had to draw a map of my fictional place so I can keep track of where everyone's comings and goings.
The nifty thing about a blog is that I can post character sketches and such to see what to look like "in print" before integrating them into the book. It's a humbling experience: I think I've got a sparkling character only to see him or her fall flat after being filtered through the blog.
About Salmon Bay--
Salmon Bay has one store/gas station: the Mercantile, called the "Merc" by everyone because the "antile" fell off the sign in 1952 and was never replaced. There are tribal offices, a school, a post office, a harbor with four docks, mostly filled with crab and fishing boats. There are five churches and four taverns: the religious folks feel they have the edge on the drunks.
More about the Merc next week.
Sunday, May 5, 2013
Me and the Wacom
Back after an intense two weeks getting three manuscripts through final edit and on their way to being published.
Huzzah!
Carpal tunnel syndrome was doing me in. I've switched from one kind of mouse to another and used a big Kensington trackball for years, but even that was getting to me after six and eight hours of editing. (I use an ergo keyboard, which helps the typing part).
Years ago I used a Wacom (and that's Wah-com, not Way-com) tablet. 1994 and I remember having to type in the code because I was doing animation on a Unix-driven system. I wondered if I'd imagined that, but no, here's the Linnux code for the ArtPad.
I now use a Wacom Bamboo Create, as my primary pointing device. There was a heck of a learning curve, I discovered I have a tapping my fingers on the tablet surface when I'm thinking, which made the tablet respond in creative ways. (Mostly it thinks I want the screen bigger.)
The new tablet functions like a tablet computer or a SmartPhone with tap, touch, and double and triple finger combos. There are also mouse keys on one side -- in 2001 the Wacom came with a separate mouse, it's all integrated now and that is cool.
I don't use either a tablet computer or a Smart phone, but figuring out the tap-touch-drag stuff is quite intuitive. What I've got is a touch screen-like-function attached to the big desktop monitor and that's kicky.
Two things you'll want to know at this juncture: I mouse left-handed. I draw and paint left-handed and write right-handed.
Usually.
Sometimes I just do whatever I was going to do with whatever hand I picked up the pen with.
The Wacom default is left-handed mousing (as if you're using a laptop touchpad) with right-handed drawing.
My brain goes wonky figuring out what I'm doing with what hand. I find myself drawing and mousing left-handed just to keep the left side and right side of my brain from screaming at me. And oh yes, the pen also has left/right mouse buttons...my poor brain does somersaults.
And occasionally I flip the Wacom to left-handed orientation--but don't change the orientation of the buttons and such -- and use the whole thing backwards.
If you've tried writing with your non-dominant hand, you may have discovered that you try to write from the opposite side of the page and backward. I'm pleased to report that the Wacom is perfectly happy with me writing backward; it appears forward on the monitor.
And now I am back to editing, because even with three manuscripts almost off my desk, there are others waiting for my attention.
Huzzah!
Carpal tunnel syndrome was doing me in. I've switched from one kind of mouse to another and used a big Kensington trackball for years, but even that was getting to me after six and eight hours of editing. (I use an ergo keyboard, which helps the typing part).
Years ago I used a Wacom (and that's Wah-com, not Way-com) tablet. 1994 and I remember having to type in the code because I was doing animation on a Unix-driven system. I wondered if I'd imagined that, but no, here's the Linnux code for the ArtPad.
I now use a Wacom Bamboo Create, as my primary pointing device. There was a heck of a learning curve, I discovered I have a tapping my fingers on the tablet surface when I'm thinking, which made the tablet respond in creative ways. (Mostly it thinks I want the screen bigger.)
The new tablet functions like a tablet computer or a SmartPhone with tap, touch, and double and triple finger combos. There are also mouse keys on one side -- in 2001 the Wacom came with a separate mouse, it's all integrated now and that is cool.
I don't use either a tablet computer or a Smart phone, but figuring out the tap-touch-drag stuff is quite intuitive. What I've got is a touch screen-like-function attached to the big desktop monitor and that's kicky.
Two things you'll want to know at this juncture: I mouse left-handed. I draw and paint left-handed and write right-handed.
Usually.
Sometimes I just do whatever I was going to do with whatever hand I picked up the pen with.
The Wacom default is left-handed mousing (as if you're using a laptop touchpad) with right-handed drawing.
My brain goes wonky figuring out what I'm doing with what hand. I find myself drawing and mousing left-handed just to keep the left side and right side of my brain from screaming at me. And oh yes, the pen also has left/right mouse buttons...my poor brain does somersaults.
And occasionally I flip the Wacom to left-handed orientation--but don't change the orientation of the buttons and such -- and use the whole thing backwards.
If you've tried writing with your non-dominant hand, you may have discovered that you try to write from the opposite side of the page and backward. I'm pleased to report that the Wacom is perfectly happy with me writing backward; it appears forward on the monitor.
And now I am back to editing, because even with three manuscripts almost off my desk, there are others waiting for my attention.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Favorite words
I've got a long list of favorite words and phrases; I'm sure I use them all the time when I'm talking. They pop up in all my first drafts. The short list:
needless to say
nonetheless
as a result
per se
vice versa
grimace
chuckle
grin
furrowed brow
squint
however
but
on the other hand
I think not
that (I find "that" everywhere in my drafts!)
It was fun looking through a first draft and picking out my pet words and phrases. I'm a "pantser": I blurt out everything I can think of in the first draft, globs of backstory, disconnected events, notes to myself, text in different colors where I've inserted notes about the notes about the notes. No one but me can make sense of the first draft, nor the second. It's often not until the third draft that I have a story with a beginning, middle and an end.
And punctuation. I've been known to type long passages with no punctuation so I can get an idea on paper.
But I can be blind to my pet phrases; before I send my work to an editor I search for pet phrases using the search function in Word: occasionally a page with light up with yellow highlights when I thought I'd done a terrific job of excising the devils.
Want to see more? Squidoo has a list of commonly overused words. And my favorite, Lake Superior State University's list of banished words and phrases.
needless to say
nonetheless
as a result
per se
vice versa
grimace
chuckle
grin
furrowed brow
squint
however
but
on the other hand
I think not
that (I find "that" everywhere in my drafts!)
It was fun looking through a first draft and picking out my pet words and phrases. I'm a "pantser": I blurt out everything I can think of in the first draft, globs of backstory, disconnected events, notes to myself, text in different colors where I've inserted notes about the notes about the notes. No one but me can make sense of the first draft, nor the second. It's often not until the third draft that I have a story with a beginning, middle and an end.
And punctuation. I've been known to type long passages with no punctuation so I can get an idea on paper.
But I can be blind to my pet phrases; before I send my work to an editor I search for pet phrases using the search function in Word: occasionally a page with light up with yellow highlights when I thought I'd done a terrific job of excising the devils.
Want to see more? Squidoo has a list of commonly overused words. And my favorite, Lake Superior State University's list of banished words and phrases.
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Tweet
I should have known that you can buy Twitter followers. Celebrities real and manufactured are paid to turn up at functions; the fan magazines of yore were filled with studio-generated stories, and yet, I was fascinated by the sheer number of companies that sell Twitter accounts (two dozen or more). How does that work?
From the article Fake Twitter Followers Becomes Multimillion Dollar Business in the New York Times:
"...fake followers were typically sold in packages ranging from $1 to $1,000 for 1,000 to one million accounts. For instance, Fiverr sells 1,000 Twitter followers for $5.
Those fake accounts can be sold to multiple buyers — in fact, buyers prefer that the accounts follow others to make them appear more authentic. Web tools that try to tell fake followers from real ones often look at an account’s inactivity or its following-to-follower ratio. The more people they follow and the more active they are, the more authentic they appear.
'There is now software to create fake accounts,' Mr. De Micheli said in an interview. 'It fills in every detail. Some fake accounts look even better than real accounts do.'
The most coveted fake accounts tweet (or retweet) constantly, have profile pictures and complete bios, and some even link to Web sites that they claim belong to them. But in many cases, a close look reveals that some of the accounts were set up purely to retweet material from specific sites."
Are you wondering where the fake accounts are coming from? Doesn't someone somewhere have to fill in at least the basic info? There is name-generating and automatic form-filling-in software; but what about the more sophisticated sites?
In 2011, there was a flurry of headlines about Chinese prisoners forced to play World of War Craft to build up virtual credits that the prison guards would sell to gamers for real money. I imagine Chinese prisoners feverishly creating Twitter accounts; or a virtual maquiladora in Mexico or perhaps a sweatshop in the USA. I've seen a couple of interesting Craigslist data entry at home job offerings that fall that could be create-fake-accounts.
However, fake accounts may be the ultimate best way to make money on Twitter, to wit:
--$1 million: how much fake-account businesses claim they can make in one week.
--1,000: A typical batch of fake follower accounts is sold between this and one million.
--$18: the average price for 1,000 fake followers.
--$30: the highest amount some sellers brag they make per fake account.
--125: how many daily retweets you can get for $150 a month. On the cheaper side, $9 will get you five retweets a day.
The funny thing about me musing about Twitter is that I don't Tweet. I know I can have an account and see what my friends are Tweeting. I am intrigued with the 140-characters-at-a-time poems, stories, novellas and novels. And no doubt I'd be tweeting away if I still lived in town and had a cell phone... but there you go, live on an island...
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