Migration from Little Language

I'm currently writing a children's book.  The first draft which contains the basic template of the plot has been completed, and therefore it has a structure of sorts. The characters have been created based on the requirements of the story - 5 children all slightly different but sufficiently similar to reflect their age and friendship. I am now going through the story and fleshing out the characters - giving them traits such as idiosyncratic modes of speech, background interests, temperaments, flaws and strengths. This is filling the pages - but proving worthy even if some of it will have to culled. Greater incidence of dialogue is bringing the anodyne script to life. At the moment it can only really be described as a work of progress.  However I have a deadline for next week - not for publishing possibilities but for proof reading and review. My thoughts are that it needs to be the best thing possible within this deadline - even though I concede it will not be the finished article.

These are the things I need to consider for this weeks draft. Language. All the characters are being developed. In many ways they are growing organically in their responses to my string pulling. They each now have their own method of delivery which I think would pass the test of reading random pieces of dialogue and identifying the speakers through usage and tone rather than the he said she said tags.  I would now like to go further by ransacking the dictionary and thesaurus and provide a raft of terminology that would not only reinforce speech differences between the characters but, and here's the motive behind this blog entry - provide sparkle and interest in the way the book is written. Later on I shall have to look at secrets and subplot which are two of the other obvious omissions from the draft, These should be capable of being inserted during subsequent editing i.e after the first review deadline so are therefor less important at the moment.

How to find interesting words for inclusion: one way I could do this is to look through the draft and replace. That is one way and I have done some of this already. However I think a better, if slightly less respected way is to organize a list of interesting words randomly selected for sound and/or meaning  and then look for opportunities to use them.  This can be more efficacious if you remember various scenes and what occurs within them, That should provide a reference point for the words that are generated as to their possible usefulness.

The one and only proviso has to be that they are more heavily influenced by sound impact than anything that might make them too difficult for children such as complexity and length. Here are some examples: skirl, splatter, skeet, scud, splinter, fizzle, fleer, kludge, phat, zing.  That kind of thing.  Nothing children are going to have any trouble understanding because they are mainly representations of sound or are so short as to not matter or be in some way self-explanatory. Makes for better individual writing improving the reading experience also. So lists first then find homes for all or more realistically some of them.

straggle,lagging - flagging, slink - to steal.to be....
foozle means to bungle. Scroop is another word for scrape. if you're corky you're buoyant. a sprat is a small inconsequential person. waxy is pale lustrous. glister is sparkle. Shirr is the gathering of material. Sparge is sprinkle. a skosh is a small amount. skirl is a high wailing tone. skimble skamble: ramblings. peppy is high energy in spirit. splotch is an irregular spot. Deckle is a ragged edge of paper. Slithering - self explanatory. .

Time To Bring Out The Thesaurus Once Again.

I have always prided myself on my knowledge of the meaning of words. I might not be the world's greatest writer, but I have always felt that I could hold my own in any word definition contest, and I always feel I should step forward and make a confidant flourish with the pen whenever the subject of words and meanings comes up at the local pub quiz.  But I don't as I have learnt that the breadth and scope of my vocabulary has planet sized holes.

The reason for this is that quiz masters and writers never ever ask things like; what does anachronistic or pusillanimous or serendipitous or reciprocity mean.  Not particularly difficult or grand words you might think - but I'd put my entire life's wealth on half the people in my local not knowing some or all of them. I know them, and a good many more, but this is not helping. The words that are asked about instead have a tendency to be strange constructions that exist but are hardly ever used outside of specialist writing or thinking. Something like 'what does a funambilist practice (tight rope walking) or what's the name for someone who collects matchboxes? (Filuminast since you ask.)  Weirdly, some of those simple souls at the pub (you know who you are) actually do know some of these aberrations. So I'm here to announce to the world that the words round is not my strength. It might even be my weakness ,(although history,science and geography would all run it close in a race to the bottom of my knowledge cache - Kevin Ashman I aint!)

These are examples of different kinds of words that have never concerned me as they would never have had me looking them up and wondering how i could get away with using them to make me sound clever. Dictionary trawling is certainly something I picked up as a dull child since I was so useless at all other subjects. I thought I could at least impress everyone with my word smitherery. And I did and I have for most of my life. But I'm not getting these darn word questions down at my local and it's really really annoying.

So I'm going to start compiling a few lists. And if I can peg enough of them together I'm going to create a study stack of them for my (and it probably will be my) use.

Free Write Story So Far

I have recently completed what I hope is the final edit of a children's book. I would like to say that writing it has been a delight but it hasn't. Like all other forms of writing for me it has presented myriad challenges along the way - some of which were practically predetermined by the previously written draft I was working on which presented the first of many of those challenges. Instead of doing the sensible and perhaps brave thing and using it as a guide and taking only the substance from it, I have sought to improve it by degrees. This has resulted in the story being too loose in it's point of view structure and tone. 

The template, and I'm happy to call it that, was constructed by a third person, notably the person with the original motivation for the story plot. My job initially was to spruce it up - check grammar, structure, spelling, character traits, continuity, dialogue, plot holes - that sort of thing. But bit by bit employing  a kind of layering process which I have used with my own writing - I have changed just about everything. All that is except point of view in that the story isn't told by any one of the individual characters. Instead I have continued with the god like omniscience of the author knowing all. Many times I have wanted to access the thoughts of some of the stronger more prominent characters and then resisted - pretty much only allowing me, the author that luxury. 

But this has not helped me. Quite why I didn't make the change to the story where it is seen the through the eyes of one of the central characters I don't know. My suspicion is that as a children's stories access to one characters thoughts - almost inevitably a child's - would present structural and stylistic issues and perhaps and interfere with the quality of the writing. My thoughts here are that a child's thoughts would be based on too limited a world view and lacking in the sophistication needed to professionalize the story into something acceptably readable. I may be wrong about this, but for some reason I certainly stayed with authorial control and found it impossible to drop - even though it proved problematic.  

The beginning has caused me loads of problems. I seem to be yoked to the 'look at the little children sleeping in their beds. Should we wake them and tell them there's an adventure about to start' kind of thing. Instead of say: Olivia yawned as she woke and looked out of the window. 

   'great the sun is shining, 'she yelled as she ran down the stairs nearly falling over the cat. 'Out the way buster, she screamed, I've got a date with a dead wizard!' She looked into the kitchen and realized that since her parents were already out she could leave without having her breakfast, washing her face or cleaning her shoes. this will be, she thought, a great day in the life of Olivia Grantchester.

The opening actually gives the impression of a camera focusing on a group of children gazing out of the window at school and wondering what was going on and why they were all due to meet up secretly under the chestnut tree at break time. No ones's thoughts are accessed, the story teller is describing the scene. This seems to have stifled the opening and to an extent the whole book. 

  

TOTT

I've been playing flashcards lately.  I know from experience that the flashcard method of learning is quite effective, based as it is on repetition and the agonies of thinking before the gradual process of reinforcement hits the message home. Obviously this is a good method for language learning - but it's also a good brain training tool for your own powers of description and expanding your word power more generally.

Today I am in the process of facing 450 cards of fairly difficult words. These aren't words that I'd be adding to any poetry lists - but instead they are words that help the power of everyday writing and speaking - the helpful avoidance of tip of the tongue syndrome - a debilitating and frustrating condition that we are all heir to; perhaps some more than most. Although not serious, there are serious connotations associated with the condition anomic aphsia. The condition which is suggestive of tip of the tongue condition removes any sense of frivolity associated with Tip of the Tongue as its the root cause tends to be serious such as head injury, stroke or age related psychological illnesses such as dementia.  We may laugh at tip of the tongue, but no-one laughs at anomic aphsia. But since I don't believe what I have is serious I'll will treat it as a minor inconvenience that might be ameliorated by flash cards and brain exercises.

For me it's the utter frustration at non instant retrieval - which can occur at anytime though tends towards greater prevalence when I am stressed or nervous. Doing these flash card tests aren't going to improve my mental condition when most afflicted by tip of the tongue condition - but the mental exercises and reinforcement processing of this of brain training concept might make episodes less prevalent.

As far as the flash carding exercise is concerned, interesting words are flowing through.  The need to think through as creative and illustrative a definition as possible once you have settled on a sense of what the word means, at least in part as many words have multiple meanings,  makes the brain work hard. Its a good little work out. Flamboyant Fervent Foible and Foist have all just come out: to show off ostentatiously, intensely fervid or zealous, an individual trait or slight frailty in character, and to thrust without debate or to put in slyly or stealthily.  All 'f' words which demonstrates that they are flying out alphabetically or what one might say frenetically: without recourse to the consideration of thinking time.  

Themes

As befits the *'dustbin' this is a repository where no literary merit can ever be expected to be found. This is where free-writes, focused and unfocused usually get done. Often they can look terribly bloated,  grammatically eccentric and completely incoherent - but there you are, this blog isn't called 'dustbin' for nothing.

The eternal hope - and it has happened - that from out of the lexical bilge typical of free writes, will come pearls, even if the fabled reader does have to look really hard to find them. All writers, however successful or grand to free write occasionally. As a process it draws on the subconscious and allows another side of the brain to way in with a few surprises occasionally. It's better I think to have an idea floating around in your thoughts so that the free write has an anchor to support it - stop it from drifting too far away, whilst at the same time allowing free rein within its constraints. I like the idea of going off on tangents - and then being pulled back to being 'on message so to speak. It allows for a certain amount of structuring and can help with getting to the nub of the idea that you first had.  The idea that made you want to free write in the first place. 

Today I have been thinking of themes and wondering if themes and the understanding of them is one of the keys to writing poetry, If as Douglas Dunn says: the poem has to come from the tongue the teeth and most of all the heart - then to write poetry without heart will probably result in a worthless poem. 

I think one way is to tap into the things that really matter to you.  This is surely where the writer gets his themes. Subjects are fine, they're all over the place.  But themes are far more personal. So, if for example one alights on a subject - recently for example I walked around a disused building that used to be a school.  I was moved by the experience because set within one of the walls was its date stone A date stone is typically an embedded stone with the date of engraving and other information carved into it. They are not considered a very reliable source for dating a house, as instances of old houses being destroyed and rebuilt (with the old date stones intact) have been reported.  But notwithstanding they excite me at least. This one was showing the putative date the building was completed: 1823. I like history so the building provides something to write about. The old bricks, the class rooms where the slates must have been scribbled on, the echoic halls, the headmasters study etc. Its all history and fills with wonder. But if one stays with these concrete things the poem will read like a piece of history and lack any wonder. This is I think where theme comes in. We have our subject -the thing that provides the prompt is the old building - but WHY has it provided the prompt? It has provided the prompt because it suggests other things that run more deeply. The notion of time passing. Experiences had and them melting away. Emotions felt - schools will have felt if they could feel: certain amounts of pride, fear, joy, nervousness, competition, many emotions. What if those emotions were somehow trapped within the fabric of the building. If we think like this what themes are emerging: The supernatural? The oddness of time? The passage of time? Life/death/achievement/ failure. If we are concentrating on these emotional states we have themes emerging. And often it is those themes that are already there in the mind of the poet who first stumbled into his subject. I'm walking around an old building and getting these feelings. Therefore they are probably from the heart. Others might concentrate on the architecture of the building -wonder at the craftsmanship of the building and the techniques and materials used. Others might concentrate on the community spirit that allowed for these schools to be built - tapping into social science aspects of the building and its functions. Others might look upon it in purely commercial terms - with a view to buying it to refurbish or convert it into a dwelling - or knock it down to reclaim the land. Its probably fair to say that anyone can have any of these thoughts.  But if primarily ones thoughts are of wonder - and curiousness and an emotional response that wishes to connect with something human in the story - perhaps they are the poets or certainly the most poetic.  perhaps a poet then is one who carries themes within him. Little obsessions that he would like to develop and learn more from. To ignore at least for the moment the reality of a situation and spend time instead trying to connect with something slightly higher or other worldly. 

Free Write. Typed at 300 mph.

Gertrude Stein  had something to say about this Free Writing business. So did Virginia Woolf. So it must work right? perhaps. Anyway here's another of mine:

It is with the utmost ambivalence that I approach this austere exercise: that of eliciting the most exciting extemporaneous text capable of being written by me, without recourse to lexical collections such as dictionaries and thesauruses. Or Thesauri if you would prefer.  It's a good and bad thing - or rather since this is an exercise in word selectivity and associated appropriateness, it is both a beneficial and helpful practice whilst simultaneously being a tedious drudge through the blinding effort of disinterring and excavation words from the dusty cells,caves like crevices and deeply scored interstices of my brain.  After all if they (the words) have decided to absent themselves, go on self-imposed exile or even choosing the option of a more benign break such as a vacation from the all consuming effort needed for day to day living, that's fine. As long as you come back smartly when called.

The observant among you will have noticed that I am ferreting around at the moment trying to remember a word that I know which I fully intended to fit into the last sentence but which steadfastly,obstinately,and with the adamantine bloody-mindedness that I have come to learn about when this kind of dispraxia, decides to bring its awkwardness to the game - it won't come until I have stopped thinking about it. Ceased to pontificate, to ruminate, to think deeply as the cogs in the brain squeak around desperate for the oil I am in the process of squirting all over them. Is there another word for squirting? Spilling suggests droplets with no force greater than gravity propelling them along, rather than additional kinetic energy which the image of squirting seems to conjure. Blasting is a bit extreme - although a blast can be relative I suppose.  I can imagine writers desperate to avoid cliches could utilise a verb like 'blast' to describe a kind of emphatically energised application of something that might be used for exaggerated effect - like blasting a verruca from the foot. Do you really? I think rather you are seeking to ease the verruca from the foot with the gentle application of medicinally proven pharmaceutical cream rather than aiming both barrels of a Martini Henry at the blight, but such is the desire to see the aberration gone, the foot holder wants to blast it to Kingdom Come - such is the contempt with which it is held and regarded. Extra force brought to the image, induced by the hurtful ire the person would undoubtedly feel for the affliction - 'I'll blast it off the face of the Earth,' might well be a sentiment that lacks logic - but putting cold logic to one side and emote a bit more and yes, you would want to blast it to Hell. And that's just a verruca a small plantar wart lesion that appears on the sole of the foot and has the temerity to resemble a mini cauliflower.  Not exactly pancreatic cancer. What would be needed if one maintained such  metaphoric grandiosity: a scud missile aimed at the solarplexes? a nuclear bomb blast piped down your throat.

Recourse to overstatement is understandable in these situations. The worse the condition the more fire added to the ire. Back to that break which actually wasn't a break but something undergone by students who look to take a year off, or a professional who feels that the time is right or ripe to drop out of the usual routine and take a - damn it's gone again. Its gone. It's swirling around in the maze of my conscience looking for the exit door. It's ascending stairs, practically falling down others, glancing concernedly at signs and maps to help the navigational process. Perhaps stopping occasionally to ask a passing emotion or a wandering word or trivial memory nugget not being summoned whether they know the where the exit is.

Other items who happen to be travelling sedately from brain to mouth towards the exit or various exits might tire of seeing this fool flailing around without a clue - too tight through inactivity and self-imposed inertia to purchase a helpful navigation aid - something like a helpful link. Links are thing that help out in situations nay crises like this. The links can act as guides for the blind the deaf and the disoriented - but if you're too good, to cool even to bother forging links you are guileless as well as guide less and your efforts will be thwarted, curtailed, blocked off.  And that's what we're experiencing here - a blockage.

Blockages can be avoided.  Links will ease the paths of the seriously lost or those who have lost direction in all senses of the word. Has it lost direction in its deeper psychological sense - a direction in live to know where it is going and perhaps ultimately where it will end up. Or are we merely talking here about finding the way to the tongue from the deeper and dustier recesses of the brain - tucked being the folds, lodged in the dark and fustian corners where things like prompts and guides and linkages can't penetrate.

Penetrate to probe in and exercise a role that suggests that encouragement under pressure will caused those who are either racked with timidity or timorousness or lain injured or stagnant through obesity.  Penetrate and his friends extricate and release should bind together, pool their redoubtable resources and bring forth those who find through time and inactivity an ability to move into the light.

Extricate and his cousins extrication and extraction can only really mobilize when locate and penetrate have completed their tasks. Find and bring to safety.  Locate using all his perceptive senses will use his own helpers - intelligence helping elves will scour around asking questions positing answers from lies and drawing enough strands out to bring to the chief of this area Intelligence.  He (intelligence) will then formulate a hypothesis through a narrowing down through selectivity of information of most probably areas where the word might be hidden might just be. Once he has the information it is within his demesne he can make a judgement about where the search teams might prioritize their future efforts if the search is to continue.  At the moment he's thinking that the word might begin with the letter V. A valetudinarian? A valetudinarian is someone who things he has multiple diseases, I think - perhaps someone who claims to have so much he habitually weakens any assertion he might  have that has more than a grain of truth to it. Victor, veracity voracious, vulpine veracity, vinous, viscous vampish, vicarious. Nothing to find there.

All interesting in their own right. A winner, a truth, something that resembles a fox, something that resembles food and wine, a fluid of dense and sticky quality that reduces stress on other material, a description of feminine activity suggestive of overt flirtation, and something that is associated with liability through a third party (all have been guessed at and no apologies will be forthcoming to excuse the erroneous content of the definitions found theretofore). But perhaps not even V. It still hasn't arrived. Intelligence is going to have to muster  its helpers - bring in the team leaders of instinct, a branch of memory called conversational snap-shot, contemplation, readers-write and quiz-master and brief them on what it needs to make a better hypothesis. Then the search and rescue squad can get in find their hostage, kill off any shacklers, slackers, binders and de-motivators, and bounce our victim - because yes it is a victim, into the open for use. Conversational snap shot is on his feet and speaking let's listen to what he has to say:

 'I have to say that I do recall an instance when this word was used.  It was during the hosts time on the Divisional Group when he addressing his team leader a certain Mr Philpot.  He said to Mr P 'I hope you enjoy your such and such as you deserve it.' The intimation there was that this break in the normality of Mr P's life was to be welcomed and nourishing in both body and soul and that this break is something that is looked forward to - not in the manner of retirement where all is behind you, but in the manner of I've worked really hard for a period of time and I wish to opt out of this for indeterminate amount of time but usually not.' exceeding one calendrical year.'

Intelligence: Think hard snap-shot try to recall the exact conversation'

Snap-shot: I believe Mr P said something like 'You're right, if anyone deserves a blank it's me. I've been at this particular grindstone for thirty five years and I've still got ten to go before early retirement.'

Intelligence: Grindstone Snap-shot? Did he really say that or are you allowing Imagination to infiltrate your memory. Is he there playing with the precision of your memorizing, filling bleak gaps with colour for the future betterment his skills when they are called upon.

Snap shot. 'You might be right intelligence. Imagination does play havoc with the specificity of my accounts.  It's as if one pause gives him the opportunity to inject an element of overt fictionalization possibly for his own and no-one else s benefit. I'm doing my best to accurately recall the finest details of the utmost veracity, I turn around and always he' there interjecting with things, weaving descriptive spells that are so interesting and fill the void so beautifully I sometimes feel powerless to resist them.'

Intelligence:  Pull yourself together snap-shot.  You occupy a very different thought area. You are to do with facts. Your milieu  is in the frozen image and the exactitude of detail contained therein.  His area is the dramatic, the poetic, the creation of vibrant moments - he knows little to nothing of the real truth. That said I know where his skills can take us when the facts are in short supply. I admit that his wayward way with things might help here - come up Imagination let me interrogate you - entrance yourself, let the nonsense flow - we're getting nowhere with facts.

Imagination: Thank you.  I was wondering when I was going to be recruited into this... sham. Surely everyone knows by now that what I have is the ability to construct a wondrous framework from which facts can be plucked. I can use image and colour and ludicrousness to create things. Chaos theory is my specialty. There is always order from mess if you know where to look.  From the farrago new truths can be deciphered and grafted onto facts with pegs that link all the way metaphorically speaking, to the Moon and beyond. I always say we can work in co-operation. Cohorts rather than adversaries. Blended skills for ultimate solutions. I can fly like a butterfly, flit from one word to another and cover everything in a cloud of gold-dust, fine as talcum. I can sew the finest filaments of silver into the drabbest of material, pull and stretch and engorge anything with colour, everything that comes my way.  And that's what you will get you back - a word that looks like an elephant in a purple onesie wearing a gold papal cap and rollerskating to the tune of I Was Kaiser Bill's Batman whilst a flapping sign around its neck reads... 'sabbatical' which is the word you've all been looking for, am I right? I know I am.  I'm not alone, there's loads of us on the right side that are ignored during these deep thinking times. Our job is to make memory memorable. Why would you not trust us.

Intelligence  All right imagination I get your point. Sabbatical. Well done.

Tests 1 and 3

This test which with astonishing creativity I will call number 3, will differ in that I will have help eliciting words (in this case between a and e)  using a thesaurus or dictionary. Each word will be selected for interest and usability - there won't be any of those specialised words that are too obscure to ever remember to ever be of use. I will then free write using as many of them as I can.

aggregate agrarian apologia assimilate abbreviate ambivalent androgynous asymmetrical arduous
bailwick baulk  benevolent burnish
corrosive cavil couch cumbersome cross-grained conflate connivance conjugal churlish cynical
diametric diatribe didactic disputatious disparage disposition disputatious disparate
excoriate excrescence execrable effectuate effeminate estimable

The number of apples found in each of the barrels amount to an aggregate of 40. Aggregate means a combined quantity of something so the following synonyms could be considered cluster, agglomerate or accumulation.  One shouldn't be confused by aggravate which is a very different word which suggests that something has been interfered with to the annoyance or discomfort of the thing itself.  Worsen, exacerbate intensify would be used in mitigation perhaps which would lead to a more vexatious state. Vexatious: a state of enhanced irritation. Irritation could also be classified as annoyance. Annoyance might be something that irks someone to the extent that they would become irrationally angered even it the object of that irksomeness is trivial.  Trivial means something that lacks serious significance.Trivial Pursuit nothing if not a masterpiece of self-awareness-based marketing where the subjects within the quizzes and the questions, despite often containing elements of interest, were essential trivial to living a full life. No-ones was ever enhanced by knowing that banana oil was obtained from coal - though I'm sure a few trivial victories were won answering questions of similar obscurity. Obscurity is a place that someone might emerge from or disappear into if they are not or no longer occupying a high profile or public faced existence. Existence is the occupational position of something that is opposite to not being present. If in existence then it is there to be seen heard touched felt or smelt or otherwise perceived. Perceived is something that can be sensed either through the traditional senses or through something that might be termed a sixth sense where an awareness is conceived through an unrecognized sensory route.

The fatigued detective frail from overwork and fraught from the disruptions in his private life feared failure above all other things. He had hoped that following his promotion that the panegyrics foisted on him as he flew outrageously through the ranks, that his fortitude and fearlessness would not be exposed as a facade: solidified fluff rather than the tensile robustness of the verifiable truth capable of surviving the hammering rigour of an interrogation. Failure in the hot seat was not an option for him. But if these interrogators attempts to drill down through what they might view as a friable personality ready to crumble the moment added pressure was applied, his confidence could conceivably fade, evanesce or shrivel in the face of hard facts fastidiously forged in the minds these formidable persecutors who would only ease off if if they could penetrate the dubious veneer of those fictive accounts he has already tried to promote as verifiable facts rather than delusional falsehoods.