Websites for Writers

Am I still doing this? Posting writing tips for other writers that I find on other websites, thus minimizing the actual work I have to do myself? I must be.

Anyway, I came across this bit from Tracy Marchini and thought it was first rate. Without a doubt, the first page is the most important page of your whole novel. It is the page people will open to in order to see if they want to purchase the book. It can’t just be good. It has to entice.

It also never hurts to check out other first pages to see what other authors do to hook readers. Go and visit Miss Snark's First Victimand check out the entries in her Secret Agent contests. Which ones are good? Which ones are bad? Which ones garnered a request from an agent? It’s a great way to see firsthand what works.

What are your thoughts on first pages? Any tips to share with the rest of us?

Random Thoughts

---Because I know you missed them. And I’m probably still in a diabetic coma from Easter.

---I blame the Cadbury Caramel Eggs, myself.

---Speaking of Easter, I put some hilarious designs on my dyed eggs this year. However, due to cruddy dye, they were all smudged and I can’t show them off. Nuts.

---I really have to start writing down these random thoughts when I think of them because I thought up a whole bunch of funny ones that I can’t remember now that I’m sitting in front of my computer.

---Seriously, I am getting so far behind on blog reading. The A to Z Challenge is killing me and I didn’t even sign up.

---The dot above i and j is called a tittle. It sounds dirty, but it’s not. Enjoy bringing it up in conversation.

---Having to take a “Cultural Competency” course makes my mom want to be less culturally competent.

---I had a dream where I was flying. Not with wings or like a superhero but in a plane. Because even in my dreams I’m a hard-headed realist.

---Oh, so the MPAA is finally letting Bully have aPG-13 rating after it was heavily edited? How kindof them.

---Jerks.

---Oh, so we stare down SOPA and PIPA and now there’s another even more overreaching billthat allows any company copy your emails/posts, send them to whoever they want and change them if they desire, as long as theydeem it necessary for cybersecurity. Son. Of. A—[expletive deleted].

---Why is it when I take the sweetest, most loving OMG-give-me-attention-NOW cat to the vet, she acts like a terror?

Pictured: a cat who will curl up on your chest like the tiny, fragile kitten she’s convinced she is and purr loud enough to drown out the television. Yet who will bite anyone in scrubs.

Don't believe her lies about me. I'm the nicest cat ever.

The Language of Confusion: Receipt

Just over a year ago, I did a post on words with -ceive and –ception in them, but I didn’t get into the niggle of the –ceit words and why that p is in receipt when the other words are just deceit and conceit. Today that ends.

The letter p drives me nuts. It’s in way too many words where it’s just there, taking up space. Some of these words evolved from Greek, where they have the letter psi, so maybeit’s okay in psychology. But come on. It’s not even necessary in receipt. Look at deceit. No p there. Is “receit” really that terrible to write?

Receipt showed up in the late fourteenth century. Back then, it specifically referred to the ingredients in the medicines of the day. Which from what I’ve heard all are something like “blood-letting” and “hope for the best.” Anyway, receipt came from the Old Frenchreceite, which basically meant the same thing. It can be traced further back as the Old French recete and the classical Latinrecepta, which means received. Three centuries after it first showed up in English, the modern definition became attached to it.

So why’s it have the p? That’s less clear, but it’s worth noting that reception has a p in it, albeit one that’s actually pronounced. We should also remember the word recipe. Not only is it another offshoot of receive, it showed up about the same time receipt took on its new meaning. And it had the similar definition of “medical prescription”. With recipe as a sibling, maybe the p just snuck in when people wrote receipt.

TL;DR: Because English is a confusing language.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary for info on psychology, receiptand recipe.

Orbis Latinus’s page on Old French.

Dr. Rebecca R. Harrison’s page on classical Latinat Truman State University.

Lessons from the Classics

I was reading THE GODFATHER the other day and it occurred to me: this book does a great job of using (and even abusing) the “rules”. One of said rules being the gratuitous use of quotation marks.

The inciting incident (Don Corleone getting shot) doesn’t happen for twenty pages. The first chapters are entirely devoted to backstory about the mafia, especially the Corleone family, in New York. Yet it works. The real importance of these chapters is in the showing of the power and reach of Vito Corleone. Honestly, about half of it could be cut without affecting the story. But the whole of the work would still suffer. No, we don’t need to hear about the depravity of the movie producer, but somehow it adds something to the infamous horse-head-in-the-bed scene.

Most of the rest of the book is full of backstory, too. Yet it doesn’t drag and rarely feels like backstory. Every character that is introduced receives at least a page that delves into their histories, minutia of detail to show us who they are and why they make the decisions they do. Every minor character has a story to tell and we hear about it.

A lot of people call it a romanticizing of the mob and they aren’t wrong, but they’re missing the point of writing. All of us writers wantpeople to sympathize with our characters. The Godfather happens to pull this off. Murderers, sociopaths, people who use intimidation to get what they want…these aren’t nice people. But Mario Puzo makes them easy to feel for. By following along their lives, we can root for the protagonists to win, even though they’re just as bad as their foes.

Thoughts? What classics have you learned from?

Happy Tax Season

Because it’s April and here in the United States, it’s that time of year when everyone decides they’ll vote Libertarian in the next election (which, of course, they won’t) because . Also known as tax season.

Here’s something for you to enjoy. It involves super heroes, so I know I did.

The Language of Confusion: Sanity

Sanity, sane, sanitation, sanitary. The words for mental soundness and the ones for purification sound alike. Being insane is being unsanitized. 

Yes, they do indeed come from the same word, the classical Latin sanus, which means healthy or sane. As to why they have a dual meaning, I can’t say. Sanity came first, showing up in the early fifteenth century with the meaning of health in its Middle French and Latin forms. At the time, “sanity” referred to both physical and mental health, and then when the mind became considered to be independent of the body, just mental.

Similarly, sane showed up in 1721, also referring to the body and not the mind. Sanitary, however, kept the old “health” meaning of the word even though it was the last of the words to show up. It didn’t appear until 1842, less than two hundred years ago.

So that answers that. And for the record, you don’t want to Google “mental health in the Middle Ages”. It’s…horrifying.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary’s pages on sane, sanity and sanitary.

...Of Course

I shouldn't be surprised, really. I sit down to write a brand new book and everything in my life goes freaking insane. This happens more often than I'd like.

So unfortunately, I'm going to be preoccupied for a while. I'm hoping it won't interfere with my blog, but things are kind of touchy right now. If I miss an update, apologies in advance. I have this week's all set to go, so don't freak out if next week isn't on time or if I'm not commenting as I should be (I can be bad about that anyway).

Here's hoping things settle down sooner rather than later...