Tuesdays with Story

Writer’s Mail
Tuesdays with Story
January 16, 2015

“If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.” – Elmore Leonard

Who’s up Next?January 20: Alicia Connolly-Lohr (chapters 9-10, Coastie Girl), Andy Brown (chapter 2.5, The Last Library), Kashmira Sheth & Amit Trivedi (chapter 9, novel), Bob Kralapp (poem, “December 27”), and Jerry Peterson (chapter 5-6, Rooster’s Story).
February 3: Lisa McDougal (chapter, Tebow Family Secret), Amber Boudreau (???), Mike Rickey (poems), Kashmira Sheth & Amit Trivedi (chapter, novel), Alicia Connolly-Lohr (chapter 11, Coastie Girl), Millie Mader (chapter 60, Life on Hold), and Judith McNeil (???).
February 17: Alicia Connolly-Lohr (chapter 12, Coastie Girl), Andy Brown (chapter, The Last Library), Pat Edwards (???), Kashmira Sheth & Amit Trivedi (chapter, novel), Bob Kralapp (???), and Jerry Peterson (chapter 7-8, Rooster’s Story).

Squirreling away the Eggcorns
By Merrill Perlman
We’ve discussed “eggcorns,” phrases so tantalizingly close to idioms or common expressions that they actually make some sense, twisted though it may be — like “for all intensive purposes” instead of “for all intents and purposes.”

Now, just in time for beach reading, an article by Mark Peters in the June-July issue of Copyediting magazine (article only available to subscribers) makes mention of the Eggcorn Database. It’s a fun place to spend some time.
Eggcorns are not just misspellings, or things that make no sense, like malapropisms or crash blossoms. They do make sense. Peters writes that they are “mistakes that, paradoxically, show people’s intelligence,” because the “spelling errors are a result of applying logic to our illogical spelling system.”
Thus we have eggcorns like “he is at her beckon call,” instead of “beck and call.” The image is of a woman signaling to a man to move closer, “beckoning” him.” Beck” is the noun from which “beckon” arose, and means a gesture; “at her beck and call: means ‘ready to obey one’s command immediately,’” Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary notes. Not quite the same as “come here,” but pretty darn close.
Read the entire, fascinating post here http://www.cjr.org/language_corner/language_corner_052714.phpYou’ll get a kick out of all the posts in the “nearly mainstream” category of the database http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/ Yikes! http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/category/english/nearly-mainstream/
Editor’s note: I am guilty here. I thought the phrase was “hone in.” In the interesting way the universe works, after I read the correct phrase, “home in,” I noticed it correctly in several books and articles I read right after that. I vacillate on liking “butt naked” (wrong) over “buck naked (correct).

Kickstarter Projects to Check Out
Writer and award-winning director Nicholas Sailer is writing a short story every day for 365 days, throughout the entire year of 2014. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/17790371/a-story-each-day?ref=nav_search A joyous and inspiring children’s book that celebrates the diversity kids experience in their lives on a daily basis by Joel Brieske. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bdibn/being-different-is-being-normal?ref=nav_search
Rachael Pongetti photographed Pensacola’s Graffiti Bridge for 365 days. I’m creating a book and exhibition that shows the daily changes of the bridge. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/graffitibridge/pensacola-graffiti-bridge-project-the-book-365-day?ref=popular

Last Word. . .
“How soon ‘not now’ becomes ‘never.’” – Martin Luther King