Coverage

Hey all! This post is probably going to be short and sweet as I'm smack-dab in the middle of about five different projects. That's also probably the reason why I'm having trouble coming up with ideas for posts. Ahh! Too much going on!

Okay, now that the mini-freakout is over, I'd like to ask some questions: what are your favorite book covers? Why are they your favorites? And if you're a writer, what kind of ideas do you come up with when you think up a book cover?

This is especially interesting to me because I've never been very good at coming up with cover ideas for my own works. It awes me that there are people out there who can come up with designs down to the smallest detail.

Any thoughts? Cover ides? Etc.?

A Momentary Lapse

Apologies are in order. I haven’t been as good a blogger friend as I should, and I neglected in visiting my friends. There’s no excuse for it and I’m sorry if I haven’t dropped by recently.

I get lazy sometimes and over the past few months, it’s been building. When I opened my reader, I’d think “Well, I’ll comment on the post tomorrow, or maybe wait until their next post.” It kept happening over and over until I finally realized that I wasn’t making any effort at all. I just kept saying “tomorrow.” It’s very intoxicating because really, tomorrow never comes.

Obviously, being in the middle of NaNoWriMo isn’t going to help me get back on track, but I’ll do better, I promise. Social networking is very important to writing—we have to connect with people. But I tend to forget that you have to continue connecting. It’s not a one-time thing. It requires effort, daily effort.

So baring death by NaNo-induced brain cramp, I’ll see you around.

The Language of Confusion: Well Well Well

I always find it interesting when two completely different words are spelled the same. Well, like a water supply, has nothing in common with well as in good.

Looking at their histories, the good well is from the Old English wel and was similar throughout all the Germanic languages. In some translations, it still is. In Swedish they have val, in Dutch wel, and in Icelandic vel. It can be traced as far back as the Proto Indo Europeanwel/wol, which means pleasing and is also the origin word for will.

The hole in the ground well is related to another definition of well (how one would well up with tears). This well comes from the Old English wiellan and is related to their word for boil, weallan, probably because of the bubbling water. Its Proto Indo European word is also wel, however in this case the definition is "turn or roll." I guess they may have had words with two meanings as well (we can only assume since what we know about the language is guesswork).

Unlike the previous definition, this word is fairly unique to English. I would have to say this is because it was more heavily influence by the speech of Angles (as in the Anglos, the Germanic tribe that spread across Europe; their name is where the word England comes from) than other languages of Germanic descent. Basically, Swedish, German and the rest found a word they liked better. We did not.

Sources

Google Translate

The Online Etymology Dictionary

Bucknell UniversityDepartment of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics lecture on Proto Indo European

The History Files post on Kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxons

NaNo Day…I don’t even know I’m so tired

NaNo isn’t coming as easy for me as it did last year. I’m not sure if it’s the story or what, but I have to force myself to get down those 1667 words—and all the while I’m reading about people who already left the 30K mark in the dust. Yeesh. It makes me look at my pitiful 15K and go “really”? I’m still on track to finish November 30, but this means I need to step it up because there’s no way I’m going to be able to write on Thanksgiving. Ack, this is really a labor this year.

But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s an act of discipline. Part of me is whining, pleading to give up because the story isn’t going to come out how I like anyway (in truth, it’s a little sparse in places). I wish I could pull that part out of me and kick its butt until it realizes that that isn’t a good enough reason to give up.

NaNo is about commitment. It’s about meeting goals, in quantity if not quality. I will not fail unless I just don’t do it. It may not come out as another HUNGER GAMES, but it will be a story, perhaps one I can return to some day and work on.

Now if you’ll excuse me. I have a story to attend to.

NaNo friends: how are you doing? Are you enjoying the challenge?

A Little Thing Called “Perception”

Think about it: it is impossible for two people to experience things in the exact same way. If you take a walk late at night in a safe neighborhood and, knock on wood, are mugged, aren’t you going to be more cautious in the future? But someone who never even heard of the danger won’t think twice about a midnight walk to the convenience store on the corner.

And sometimes, you physically perceive things differently. A painting can be made up of the deepest red and sharpest green, but if you’re color blind, it’s going to look like a red/green screen.

The same goes for everything else in life, including books, movies and television. So don’t presume to tell anyone why his or her judgment is wrong. Shoving someone’s head into a toilet would not be a good way to get your point across about, say, water conservation. Although it might be fun.

One day, I visited a blog where the writer posted his feelings about a book I happen to like. This person didn’t like it. Okay. Fine. Not everyone has to like the same things. I’m not going to blame you for it no more than I’d blame you for not liking chocolate. We all have our tastes. It just would have been nice if he showed me the same courtesy.

He berated the book most harshly, and in some places, I think unfairly. But it was made worse by the fact that he acted critical of anyone who didn’t see the same flaws he did. They were so obvious only an idiot would miss them, there was no reasonable explanation for them, the writing was bad and the only way the book could have been sold was because of heavy marketing (basically, a conspiracy by the publisher to make a hit).

Entertainment is, by nature, subjective. We will all like different things, and there’s nothing wrong with that. That being said, please remember that if something is flawed, crude, or even offensive, you have no right to insinuate the people who enjoy it are stupid, nor that they are incorrect in their perceptions of it.

Language of Confusion: Equal

I have been meaning to do this word forever. And now here it is.

Many words that have to do with balance and similarity start with equa-, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that equal comes from the classical Latin aequalis, which means identical or uniform. There isn’t much information about further origins, just that it’s related to aequus, which means fair or even, as well as egalitarian by way of Old French.

Most of the other equa- words have similar origins. They were either taken directly from the classical Latin or from the Old French, which was in turn taken from classical Latin ; ). The first ones to show up in English were equity and iniquity. It’s worth noting that at first, iniquity just meant in- as in not and equity as in equal, so unequal. The evil meaning came later and since it’s not in the Latin version of the word, it was probably the Old French version that created the meaning. The whole change makes sense since there is no greater evil than injustice.

Also interesting is equinox and equator, both of which stem from Medieval Latin. The first comes from equinoxium, which means “equality of night and day” and is from aequus and nox (night). The second is from the phrase aequator diei et noctis, “equalizer of day and night”. I guess it was a little wordy because they shortened it when first referring to the diameter of Earth equidistant between the poles.

Of course, all the words have their stories. Equivocation, equivalent, even adequate, which originally meant “to make equal to” before it morphed into “equal to what is required.” Why did it change? Because we needed it to.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Google Translate

Twitter for Beginners, Dos

When I first joined Twitter, I was pretty lost. I figured out the hard way that whenever you mention an iPod, you will be spammed for the next twenty minutes with links to questionable music sites and “free” iPods. Those quotes are there for a reason, people.

I try to avoid spam triggers because of how relentless they can be. Plus it’s not fun to accidentally click on a link and then have your computer lock up while your antivirus software freaks out from an overload of malicious programs. Until Twitter makes it so you can prevent link spamming, you’ll have to do with being careful when using the following words:

1. iPod. As I mentioned, this, iTunes or iPad will bring on a lot of spam links.

2. Computer. Same as above. I tend to write this as comp uter. They’ll never crack that code.

3. Movie. More links, this time involving SHOW TIMES NEAR YOU!!!1!

4. Blog. You usually get offers to earn a living blogging from home. Now I’m not saying this can’t be done. I’m just saying it’s highly suspect when a company pretends to be a person to have a Twitter account and send a link whenever a word is mentioned.

Finally, there are bots that will tweet a quote at you if you mention a certain movie/TV show. Unlike the above, these bots aren’t really malicious. They don’t send out links or even follow anyone. They just quote from their subject, I guess so followers can go “Ah! I remember that episode!” It’s amusing if you like the show but kind of gets tedious after a while.

Overall, these are kind of the Seven Words You Can’t Say On Twitter. Except there isn’t seven. And unlike the list of words you can’t say on television, this list you technically can say (or tweet, rather). It just attracts a lot of offers begging you to AcT NOww or loose This great oportunity.

Have you ever been bothered by spammers? Any words you’ve noticed that attract spam?