Six Websites for Writers, Annotated

                    

teachwrite.com

Its homepage invites you to “Step into Speculative Writing.” Mike Akins led me to the site after we discussed proofreading marks last week. For a comprehensive list of them, click on Teachwrite’s “edit” footprint. Don’t stop there. Take advantage of explanations offered about a story’s structure. Try the graphics the site provides to help you flesh out characters and outline your ideas. Designed for students, it exemplifies how computers impact today’s classroom. It deserves a place in the “favorites” of writers, parents, teachers, and students.

world-english: test, learn and study the English language online

Describing itself as “the one-stop resource for the English language and more…,” it fascinates and overwhelms. Avoid the site when you’re pinched for time, or if you tend to amble down rabbit trails when you should be working. Examples of distracting links: “Interesting News Stories,” “World English Slang,” and the numerous quiz links. But true to its subtitle, it is a great place to check your vocabulary, and have fun with word games and grammatical quizzes.

Lynch Guide to Grammar

 Lynch Guide to Grammar and the many links Jack Lynch provides covering all things English is another site that’s fun to get lost in. If you can put a name on a grammatical question, Jack Lynch’s guide will no doubt help you. If you can’t name your problem, check out “Bugbears,” and you may decide to wing it. His introduction begins with: “Arguments over grammar and style are often as fierce as those over Windows versus Mac, and as fruitless as Coke versus Pepsi or boxers versus briefs. Pedantic and vicious debates over knotty matters such as….” Well, you get the gist. But there are conventions in English, and if in doubt you’d do well to find out what Mr. Lynch has to say.

Resources for Writers and Writing Instructors

Jack Lynch apologizes for the page he states needs reorganizing. Sure enough, I discovered several broken links. On the plus side, though, the annotated links give you a better idea of what you can find than by simply reading the title alone. Also, according to Mr. Lynch, none of the sites he lists are commercial. I’d give him two thumbs up for that.

The Norton Anthology of Poetry

If you are a non-poet and a member of a mixed-genre critique group, peruse this site. It is a good place to begin learning how to understand, and eventually appreciate poetry. Its glossary, less complete than websites aimed at the more advanced poet, also lacks pronunciation of the words listed. On the other hand, it offers the novice a learning aid: “glossary flashcards.”

Worthless Word for the Day

You can Google it. Also, you’ll find it with the dictionaries listed in onelook.com. Ironically, the dictionary includes aubade, a word listed in Norton’s Anthology of Poetry. If aubade is silly, the serenade must be as well. Kudos to wwtd’s compiler. Where can humor writers find a better list of uncommon, rib-tickling words?

Speaking of words, 500 are enough for now, aren't they?

Flyspecks and Pygmies

“They have their ghastly origins in the rank miasma of the tarn.” –Unknown. Creepy, isn’t it? I can hear witches chanting and see a ghost-like being holding a skull dripping with blood.

The next time you have nothing prepared for your critique meeting, (it happens to all of us at times) cancel your thoughts about the poem you planned to perfect or chapter you wanted to finish. If you’re under pressure from outside sources, take a break from serious writing. Think fun instead. For example, play Flyspecks.

A Creative Writing Activity:

Flyspecks, Briefs, Minis, Midges, Pygmies, or whatever you want to name yours, are prompts in a file or notebook you’ve set up. When squeezed for writing time, select three or less and write no more than 150 words inspired by the prompt. Have fun devising your own prompts. But, just in case you need something quick today, here are ideas to start with.

• List words you've met in reading, but rarely use yourself. Pick one. Check the definition if you need to. Use it in a sentence or short paragraph. Remember this is a creative writing activity, not middle school vocabulary homework. Don’t try to identify the meaning of the word as you write. Simply use it.
• Here are words to consider if you haven’t started your own list yet. Do you recognize the words miasma and tarn? The following words are listed in one of the “Cat in the Corner” blogs: burnishing, cantilevered, duvet, encomium, harridan, incipient, irascible, maladroit, mullion, oriel, pneumatic, proffer, rheumy, simper, unguent.
• Write a brief character sketch about a person who simpers or is irascible.
• Oscar married a harridan. Why? 
• Mr. Blurry can’t bring himself to kill a furry little mouse. Write a 4-line verse about it.
• Write a few lines about a story, TV show or movie you saw lately.
• Describe a facial expression.
• Disagree with something you read or heard recently.
• What's a nob?
• Disagree using humor or sarcasm. Or make a shocking statement cushioned with humor. For example, do you wonder if someone eats their children?
• Describe a place—anything from a scenic wonder to a hoarder’s garage.
• Is anything growing in your refrigerator?
• Pretend you're learning English as a foreign language. Mention something that seems completely nonsensical to you.
• What about your pet (and that could be your significant other) makes you smile, melts your heart, or invites your fury?

You have the idea, right? A good reason to commit to writing something every week: like veggies, creativity is healthful. (See my blog, Creative Thinking: Eight Great Benefits.) What that means to you is you can give yourself permission to prioritize your writing activities, even if it's a hobby. It's good for you. So go ahead and have fun.

(c) 2012, Bernice Simpson

Two from Ten

"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning." --Mark Twain

Good writers bring together words that create pictures, stimulate thought, and stir emotions. "Powerful words harmonize heart and mind as if a symphony," said Toba Beta.

How do you learn to use the right words--words that harmonize? First, collect. circle, and later clip words in context from yellowed paperbacks, magazines and newspapers. Then use them. But not as you did in school by order of teachers of tedium: "Use the word in a sentence that indicates you understand the word's definition." There is a better way:

Learn Words through Play 

• Collect words in context. No time just now? Then borrow from my collection. Today's ten examples, listed alphabetically, all begin with the letter T--one letter to expedite checking definitions if you need to. 
• Scan the word preceding each selection. By itself a word is like an elm tree in winter, its branches dark and tattered against a grey sky. In context, words take on color like the leafed-out tree, its green variegated by sunlight.
• Notice how the word is used in each selection. Did the context increase your interest in the word? 
• Mark the selections you like, and note why they deserve a happy face. 
• Choose two or more words, and use each in a sentence or paragraph. Call on your muse and have fun. Think of each as a splash of color in a painting. The activity's purpose is to practice writing well, and not to exemplify a word's definition. 
• For feedback, take your selections to your critique group. 

Tacit

• "Somehow the workers always seem to be able to find ingenious ways of evading or even sabotaging the plan. Sometimes, in fact, these evasions take place with the tacit connivance of the foremen, who are no fonder of the restrictive controls on them than the workers are of theirs.” -Unknown
• "The pistol was used in self defense, but when the prosecutor does not pursue the issue of carrying a concealed weapon, the DA's office is giving tacit approval for vigilante behavior." -Unknown

Taciturn

• "Their imprint endures in neat coastal villages, carefully cultivated fields, ... and taciturn men of the sea like Carl Darenberg, Jr., who talks in slow tempo of the fortunes of sportsfishing." -Unknown
• “I picture McCrae, the whimsical but principled free spirit, and Call, McCrae’s taciturn and granite-hard best friend and partner, riding through these dusty streets before leaving Texas on a grand adventure….” –Suzy Banks

Taxonomist

• “They are known to be gregarious, exceptionally intelligent primates, and the only apes whose society is said to be matriarchal … and orgiastic: they have sexual interactions several times a day and with a variety of partners. While chimpanzees and gorillas often settle disputes by fierce, sometimes deadly fighting, bonobos commonly make peace by engaging in feverish orgies in which males have intercourse with females and other males, and females with other females. No other great apes—a group that includes eastern gorillas, western gorillas, Bornean orangutans, Sumatran orangutans, chimps and, according to modern taxonomists, human beings—indulge themselves with such abandon." –Paul Raffaele, Smithsonian11/06

Teem

• “They point to an Islamicized Europe, where mosques teem and churches go empty; where the Islamist position on almost every critical issue is either adopted or tolerated”. - Dr. Richard Benkin

Telescope

• “Then Kristin's talk paused, and Elsa looked up to see her holding a dress she had just taken from the telescope. The dress was cheap, too-much-laundered, and the instant defensive words jumped to Elsa's lips…” -Wallace. Stegner The Big Rock Candy Mountain
• “Mrs. Switzer was trying … to get all of Daisy’s things into the battered telescope that lay on the bed.” Ruth Suckow
• “She tried hastily to put on the cover of the bulging telescope and to fasten the straps. One of them broke.” Ruth Suckow

Termagant

• “For almost sixteen years, Sandy dominated my marriage like a termagant mother-in-law, and now that she is no longer there to edge between us as we walk, Gerdi and I hardly know what to do with our new-found freedom.” - Dayton O. Hyde, 1968
• “Washington’s mother ... was a termagant and a Tory, though his wife was a jewel of affability and charm who endured the rigors of winter encampments with her husband through the war and sustained him through periods of ravaging pessimism.” –Fawn M. Brodie

Thrum

• “As he ate, a seagull landed on the thrum cap and eyed him quizzically. ” D. Preston & L. Child
• “Then, as if a herdsman had cracked a whip, wildebeest, zebra, gazelle and antelope sweep over the plains, and for a few weeks the Serengeti thrums with hoofs pounding against hard earth. These are sounds our hominid ancestors would have heard. … a scene they may have watched from a hillside overlooking the plains.” – Virginia Morell, Smithsonian ‘06
• The thrumming pulses in her brain had begun to leak into one another like spies whispering secrets but she was still on her feet and … her enemies had not triumphed.” - Joyce Carol Oates

Tonneau

• “Edna Duvalier clambered into the tonneau, scowling and fanning herself impatiently.” -Scott Zesch/Alamo Heights
• These were the days of extra fuel carried in a can, of rear-door tonneaus, acetylene lamps, and rims which were not demountable. The filling station, where it existed in its rudimentary form, was still the mere adjunct of a garage whose weightier business lay in repairs to motors.” -Charles Merz

Trenchant

• “While admirable biographical and critical studies appear from time to time, and here and there a whimsical or trenchant discursive essay like those of Miss Repplier or Dr. Crothers, no one would claim that we approach France or even England in the field of criticism, literary history, memoirs, the bookish essay, and biography.” –Bliss Perry
• “On Jargon … gives trenchant and amusing examples of that disregard for the primary meaning of words to which all writers are liable, whether they are freshmen in college of practicing journalists.” –McCullough & Burgum
• “Though The Devils is quite possibly the most violent of Dostoevsky's novels, it also brims with buffoonery and trenchant social satire.” - Vance Adair

Truncheon

• “He had a selection of weapons laid out on the old pine table: a wicked-looking knife that he claimed was SS equipment, a Walther P38 automatic pistol of the kind Flick had seen German officers carrying, a French policeman's truncheon, a length of black-and-yellow electrical cord that he called a garrote, and a beer bottle with the neck snapped off.” -Ken Follett
• “Police used truncheons and plastic shields to disperse protesters along the narrow streets…” -Unknown

Keep what you write in a notebook or binder. If you like to write, you'll enjoy comparing your early efforts to later work.

 

Mullions, Oriels, and Irascible Harridans

"Hilarious," said one review. It described the British author of eleven best-selling novels as "sharp-witted" and one who gives satire "an extra bite."

I chose the paperback expecting to get a two-for-one from it. I planned to use it to exemplify the structure of novels for a new writer. And for me? Well, who can't use more humor in their life? It turns out I gained neither from reading my selection. I'm too reserved to recommend a book filled with vulgarities.

On the other hand, the author proved, by her facility with language, that she had cut her teeth in writing before she gained the moniker, novelist.

The following is a sampling of words she used that helped balance terms I found offensive. If half of the list puzzles you, squeeze more reading into your schedule.

1. Burnishing
2. Cantilevered
3. Duvet
4. Encomium
5. Harridan
6. Incipient
7. Irascible
8. Maladroit
9. Mullion
10. Oriel
11. Pneumatic
12. Proffer
13. Rheumy
14. Simper
15. Unguent

Do you need help building your facility with words? Check out www.merrium-webster.com. It's a neat site.

(c) 2012, Bernice W. Simpson