Tuesdays with Story

Writer’s Mail
September 18, 2014

“Most characters in everybody’s fiction have trouble with relationships. That’s just where the stories are.” – Lorrie Moore, short story writer/novelist (1957)

Notes from 1st and 3rd
Nine of us gathered around the tables to the side for an Author event. Andy Brown shared a little of his experience at GenCon this year.

Lisa reads from Chapter 21 of Tebow Family Secret. Judith liked it and thought she read the plot along nicely, but she was looking for some more descriptions at one point. Pat agreed because IKEA is overwhelming for people who have been there before and suggests some description of sensory overload. Amber’s interested in the similarities between her current experience and prison. Jerry doesn’t like the use of two flashbacks and instead wanted to be kept in the moment. Andy B. wanted more reactions on one person’s part at the beginning of Chapter twenty-two.

Amit reads from Chapter five of their as-yet untitled novel. Millie liked the descriptions right off the bat at the beginning of the chapter. Lisa loves the dichotomy of the chapters coming from Amit and Kashmira and applauds the contrast where each touch her in a different place. Pat enjoyed the chapter and, in particular, the point where the note goes in the tree, and that she doesn’t have to be told this is a way two characters sent messages to one another previously. Jerry wonders what would happen if the gardener had appeared at this point.

Pat reads a couple poems, The Critic’s Voice and You May Already Be An Old Lady. Andy B. likes the metaphors when she uses them and wishes she would use them more. Both Andy’s thought the word probably could go. Jerry thought it was okay. Andy B. thought it should start with a statement instead of quote. For the second poem, Pat tells us she doesn’t have an ending for it. Perhaps it should have started off funnier and then get more serious.

Amber reads from Chapter 15 of her untitled novel in the works. Andy P. was looking for some more description of a new character. Jerry wondered if one couldn’t let their other side. Andy P. wants a physical reaction from one character.

Judith reads from My Mother, Savior of Men. Millie thought the story took place in Raleigh, North Carolina, but it’s sort of a nebulous, undefined area. Pat wonders why the reader doesn’t get taken with the character to the museum. Andy B. thought there was one spot where there was a lot of info out of place; Pat suggested it might be a little too lecture-like.

Jerry shares a scene from Chapter 22of his new novella Rubbed Out. Pat liked the grackles on the stools. Some of us had a problem with the time in the truck, not realizing it went down to the second. Andy B. had one nit-picky thing. Andy P. thought clothespin is one word and the e-mail makes him think the story is set in the late nineties instead of current times.

10 Crazy and Unusual Book Designs
By Emily Temple on Apr 7, 2012 2:00pm

Recently, we found out about a cookbook that you can actually eat after you’re done reading the recipes inside, which to us sounds pretty much like the best idea ever. Inspired by this elegant and — let’s face it — kind of crazy book, we went hunting for other wildly unusual book designs, from the edible to the mechanical to the technically alive. True, we mostly think all books are little objects d’art, but these go above and beyond the normal standards, each one an innovative and interesting piece of design as well as a functioning book. Click through to check out our gallery of some of the most crazy design ever to be applied to books, and let us know if we missed any cool ones in the comments! http://flavorwire.com/277657/10-crazy-and-unusual-book-designs/view-all

Who’s up next . . .
September 23: Ruth Imhoff (revised chapter 1, Motto of the Hound), Liam Wilbur (end of chapter 1, Prisoner of the Gods), and Jack Freiburger (???)

September 30: Fifth Tuesday

October 7: Andy Brown (chapter, Man Before the Fall), Andy Pfeiffer (chapters, The Void), Millie Mader (chapter 58, Life on Hold), Kashmira Sheth & Amit Trivedi (chapter, novel), Bob Kralapp (???), and Jerry Peterson (short story).

October 21: Lisa McDougal (chapter, Tebow Family Secret), Andy Brown (chapter, Man Before the Fall), Cindi Dyke (chapter, North Road), Pat Edwards (???), Kashmira Sheth & Amit Trivedi (chapter, novel), and Judith McNeil (chapter 20, My Mother, Savior of Men).

September’s Fifth Tuesday . . .
We will all gather at The Chocolaterian Café, 2004 Atwood Avenue, on September 30 for Fifth Tuesday. This is an order-off-the-menu gathering.

Here’s the writing challenge: Write either a scene from a fictional memoir or an obituary for a fictional character, your choice. Length, no more than 250 words. Email your finished mini-masterpiece to Jerry Peterson by Monday evening, September 29.

Newsletter editors . . .
Pat Edwards continues as our Writers Mail editor this month. We need an editor for October. How about you?

How dictionary makers decide which words to include
http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/08/economist-explains-15
EARLIER this month the Oxford Dictionaries added a number of new words to its online collection. (This is not to be confused with the flagship Oxford English Dictionary.) As usual, Oxford included buzzy internet- and youth-inflected coinages such as “neckbeard”, “sideboob” and “mansplaining”. And as usual, internet commenters seemed nonplussed by what seemed to be a venerable institution (ie, Oxford) validating teenage slang. How do lexicographers decide what goes into the dictionary?

In short, dictionary-makers act more like a fisherman, gathering words with a wide net, than a policeman, keeping out “bad words”, as Erin McKean, a lexicographer, formerly of Oxford and now of Wordnik, an online dictionary, put it. Nearly all modern dictionaries are descriptive, in that they seek to find the words people actually use and record them. They are no longer primarily prescriptive in the sense of granting “good” words official status while keeping slang and neologisms out.

But this does not mean that dictionaries include everything. Print dictionaries must trade off size and cost against including enough words for the dictionary to be useful. Such dictionaries naturally omit many extremely rare or scientific words. But lexicographers also wait until a word seems to have wide and enduring uptake before including it. Include a neologism too soon, and the word may have fallen out of fashion before the ink on the first print run is dry. But if words are used for a long enough period by a wide enough swathe of English-speakers, the lexicographers make the judgment call to include the word. This is not the same as approval. Indeed serious dictionaries include foul language and racial slurs.

The internet is radically changing lexicography. So many dictionaries—from both traditional and new publishers—are free online that lexicographers compete to offer features such as audio pronunciations, access to their database of historical citations and so on. Perhaps inevitably, online lexicographers include new words more quickly than their print counterparts do. There is no real space consideration, for one thing. And for some kinds of searches, an online dictionary that does not keep up with new language will be out-competed by other dictionaries that do. For example, Urban Dictionary, an online resource full of scurrilous definitions, included “sideboob” in 2005. Pressure from internet dictionaries may have led Collins, an traditional dictionary, to allow Twitter users to vote for a new word to be included—the winner was “adorkable”. So it is hardly surprising that even Oxford includes a few “cray cray” (in other words, crazy) new words each year. A final advantage of online lexicography is that over-hasty entries can easily be removed.

What those new words mean . . .
All definitions and examples taken from the Urban Dictionary:
neckbeard
1. (n) Facial hair that does not exist on the face, but instead on the neck. Almost never well groomed.
2. (n) Derogatory term for slovenly nerdy people who have no sense of hygene or grooming. Often related to hobbies such as card gaming, video gaming, anime, et. al.Example: If this party is full of f*cking neckbeards, I’m out. I’ve got better things to do than sit around with a bunch of unwashed nerds.
sideboob
A view of the female breast seen from a side; generally under loosely-fitting clothes. Very titillating (pun intended) and sexual without showing any overt nudity.
Example: My brother’s g/f’s sideboob totally distracted me from my own g/f.
mansplaining
The tendency of some men to mistakenly believe that they automatically know more about any given topic than does a woman and who, consequently, proceed to explain to her – correctly or not – things that she already knows.
Example: Woman A: When he started mansplaining to me what it really meant to be a woman in the 21st century, I got up and left.
Woman B: Really, what else could you do?
adorkable
Both dorky and adorable. A higher state of being all dorks strive towards.
Example: That dork is so adorkable I could just hug him till I die.