Taking A Break

Not from blogging. Or writing. This time, I mean from the internet.

I kind of had to take one last weekend because I was so busy. First I went out to the movies (Prometheus is frigging awesome, by the way) and because it was right smack in the middle of the day I didn’t have computer time. Then the next day I helped my mom put together a bookcase (and by that I mean I put together the book case) and I have no idea why it took as long as it did. Two freaking hours but it’s done.

Um. Anyway. My point is that taking a break from the internet isn’t a bad idea. Except for holidays and that enforced break from the hurricane last year, I’ve been on the computer every day, usually doing work, occasionally just messing around. Having to be online all the time is surprisingly draining.

So take a break. Once a month, once a week, just at some point unplug. Preferably after you comment on my blog, of course ;). But now that this post is done—and it was short totally so you could be finished quickly and not because I’m lazy and have no ideas—go outside. Read a book that’s not on the computer.

Language of Confusion: -lapse

I was going to do another letter post but those require a lot of research and I’m a little busy right now. I think these are awesome anyway. Don’t you agree?

Where did those crickets come from?

Anyway, this week’s word is lapse and all the cognates thereof. Lapse showed up in the early (verb) to mid (noun) fifteenth century from the Middle French laps. The French word, of course, comes from classical Latin, where the word is lapsus—tripping or falling. Our current definition is pretty close although has taken on a more metaphorical sense.

The related words, in order from “I’ve heard of that” to “that’s a word?”, are collapse, relapse, prolapse, elapse, delapse, illapse and interlapse. Yes, those last three are words. No, I didn’t know what they meant until I looked them up.

As usual, the difference is in the prefixes. The col- part comes from com-, a prefix which means together. Put together it means “falling together”, which is the literal meaning of its Latin form collapsus. Today, collapse seems to have taken over for lapse as a word for a literal fall. Next on the list is relapse, a word for falling back into an old habit. Since the re- prefix means “back”, I’d say this one isn’t a big mystery. 

We also have elapse, from the Middle French elapser and the classical Latin elapsus, slip or escape from. The e- is from ex- and means out or away from, so together it means slip away from. These days, elapse mostly refers to the escaping of time. Prolapse usually refers to something in your anatomy that has fallen out of place. It comes from the classical Latin prolapse—shocking. The prefix pro- can mean before or forward, making the word “to slip/fall forward”. Fitting.

Now for the words that I’ve never heard of before. According to Dictionary.com, delapse means "to pass down by inheritance". It doesn’t have an entry in the Online Etymology Dictionary, but the prefix de- means down from, so to delapse is to “pass down from a fall (death)”. Next, in illapse, the il- comes from the prefix in-. There are two separate definitions of this prefix, but I’m pretty sure this one comes from the second one, “into” since the dictionary says illapse means glide or fall into. Finally there’s interlapse, which means the interval (or lapse) between two events. Inter- is related to enter and means among or between. So the definition is pretty much “between the lapse”. I guess since we can just say “the time elapsed” or “interval”, interlapse kind of fell into disuse.

Whew. Okay, that took longer than I thought…

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Dictionary.com

Blocked

On Twitter the other day, I commented that I was having a little writer’s block—the words are there, but I can’t seem to get them out (the only consolation is that the resulting frustration is fuelling my ideas for blog posts, so there’s an upside to everything). I know where the story is going, I have a good grasp on the characters, I can picture the scenes in my head, but when I sit down in front of the computer…boom, it all goes out of my head.

Part of the problem is the thrall of the internet. I look at something when I’m supposed to be writing and I get distracted. Then later on, all I want to do is go back and I can’t think enough to write, and missing one day is enough to screw up my whole flow. It’s a problem.

If I had advice to give from this, it would be: don’t break your writing schedule for anything. Granted, this isn’t always possible (especially for those of you with kids…happy summer vacation, by the way) but you have to have discipline. Or at least I do, and there’s probably someone out there who this also applies to.

Habit-habit-habit. Keep writing. When you can’t visualize a scene, write another one, even if it doesn’t come for another ten chapters. Write something else, maybe a short story, just to keep your fingers moving. Write blog posts about how you have writer’s block and possible ways to break said block. Keep the story in your mind and stay away from the internet. Especially TVTropes, the foul temptress.

How do you deal with writer’s block? Do you have any ways to keep it at bay?

Yes, It Happened Again

This is a piece I call "What Happens to the Writer When the Internet Gives Out After Shelling Out Seventy Dollars for a New Router".

The hammer is named "Righteous Fury"

My wrath is undying, internet. Remember that.

Language of Confusion: Quag-mired

Honestly, I just find the word quagmire fascinating for some reason I can’t even articulate. Quagmire, as in a literal place to get stuck, showed up in the 1570s, while the figurative meaning sprung up in 1775. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the word is closely related to “mire”, which has pretty much the same meaning. Mire showed up earlier, in the fourteenth century, from the Old Norse myrr, a bog. Again first the literal meaning showed up, then about a century later the figurative. Basically, mire’s two meanings were established before quagmire even came onto the scene.

The question then becomes where did that “quag” come from. Believe it or not, quag is a real word. Or at least it was. It’s kind of fallen out of use over the years. Quag is another word for a marsh, 

coming from the Middle English quabbe, again, a marsh, and the Old English cwabba, which means…tremble. Yes, really. Like how a cup of Jello trembles when you shake it. I suppose because marshes were soft and shaky?

So a quagmire is a marshy bog. Although that may seem redundant, they are quite different, something else I didn’t know before I researched this post. A marsh is formed by things like the ocean and lakes and is usually full of plant lifewhile a bog is formed by precipitationand therefore has much less vegetation, usually just peat mosses. I guess a quagmire would be somewhere between the two, although these days it’s mostly used in references to war or the economy and pretty much anything else someone wants to claim is out to get them.

Sources

Online EtymologyDictionary

The EPA’s pages on wetlands

There’d probably be more if my dumb internet was working right…

Word Search

No, not the kind where you circle words mixed in with a jumble of letters. I mean actually searching your manuscript for problem words and phrases.

I’ve mentioned a few times that I have a list of words I scour my work for using Word’s find function. A lot of them are pretty common sentence fillers: just, only, every, probably, since, and that are the worst offenders, but by no means the only ones. It’s also wise to scour for words like feel, think and see (or felt, thought and saw for you past-tense writers) since they tend to pull the reader out of the book. As in, “I feel hurt” puts distance between the reader and the character whereas “I’m hurt” does not. But I digress.

There are other words you want to watch out for, the ones that you have a particular fondness for and often don’t realize you use. These are more specific, the words that sound right to you but will become repetitive for readers. Imagine reading “she appeared” every time a character enters the room. If you start noticing it, wham! Out of the book. Unfortunately, you might have to wait for a beta reader to say “You use ‘of course’ a lot” before figuring it out. For example, besides “of course”, I found quite a few instances of “flush” in my book. It’s one of those words that can be used once or twice a book without incident but more than three or four and readers start to go “does this girl’s face ever stay normal?” Again, not good.

So there are many reasons to word search your MS. I suggest waiting until after major rewrites are complete before doing a word search. There’s no point in clearing out useless words if a new chapter’s just going to need it done again.

And for the record these are my words: still, there, though, although, before, after, once, at least, of course, appear, then, while, almost, even, what, start, begin, begins, good, how, just, only, every, can, well, probably, that, since, as, like, so, some, when, seem, been, could, would, should, I, we, ’re, n’t, ’s, ’d, ’ve, be, is, are, am, I’m, was, were, we’re, keep, kept, got, get, had, has, felt, feel, think, thought, try, tried, tries, may, might, grew, grow, look, found, find, knew, know, become, became, smell, stupid, sense, hear, come, came, go, goes, went, taste, see, saw, watch, believe, flush, area, smile, cry, cries, cried, tear, sob, sobbed, wonder, time, pop, face, flash, thing, almost, if, finally, barely

And this doesn’t even include my adverb search.

What about you? Any words you especially overuse? How do you deal with problem words?