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Solving your writing problems since 1998! |
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The
Write Way
13 June 2008 Isn't It Won-der-ful? Greetings, Here's a question for you ... What's the one thing we all do every day, everywhere, all our lives that's so amazing, so breathtakingly complex and so "mind-bogglingly" difficult to even comprehend that it's a wonder we ever manage to do it? Did you say breathing? Eating? Digesting? Walking? Sleeping? Dreaming? Yes, I agree, any of these are equally amazing when you stop and think about all the complicated chemical, physical and intellectual processes involved, but the one I was thinking of was just plain talking. Stop for a moment and consider how miraculous an achievement this is ... we open our mouths and after a series of manipulations of various muscles from our diaphragm and our lungs to our throat, larynx, pharynx, vocal cords, epiglottis, tongue, palate and lips, we blow air out and produce a variety of sounds. (Just as an interesting aside ... all the speech sounds of English are produced by an expulsion of air from the lungs, whereas many other languages use sounds made when the breath is drawn in ... No, no idea why this is so ... just one of Those Things.) Pretty clever, eh? But not nearly as clever as the way people around us recognise these sounds and can distinguish between all the different huffings and expirations, extract meaning from them, and then share our thoughts, feelings, plans ... And we take all this for granted. So, have you ever stopped to wonder exactly how we go about learning to do this? Those of you who've undertaken the challenge of learning another language in adulthood need no reminders of how difficult it is, yet we expect little babies to learn a language before they can walk ... and the truly wonderful thing is that they do! And the reason we can learn to speak so apparently effortlessly as infants is that we carbon-based bipeds are hard-wired to learn language. And not only the words, but also the grammar! No, really ... I can see I have some work ahead of me to convince you that grammar is born into us ... We have a genetic predisposition to sort, to classify and to find relationships (of the big/small, high/low, near/far, first/last, young/old variety, not the "D'you think he likes me? I saw him looking at me on the bus" type of relationship). If you have any toddlers in your family circle, give them a basket of objects of different shapes, sizes and colours. (Under strict supervision, of course ... We all know that children use all their senses to explore their world and that the mouth is an extraordinarily sensitive organ, which is why after looking at and touching something new, it usually finds its way into their mouths ... whether it's a cuddly toy or dog poo.) Now watch what happens if you leave them to their own devices while you observe from the sidelines ... They'll sooner or later start to sort the objects ... it may be according to size or shape or colour, but they'll sort them one way or the other, because we humans are attracted to order rather than disorder. There's a jolly simple reason for this, too. Without order, we can't live in a group situation. We have to be able to know that things will be where they are; we have to know that people will react in a predictable way; we have to know where we stand in the scheme of things. Language helps us create this essential order, so it's really important that all speakers of a language have the same understanding of that language. If I say, "Watch out for the bus!" just as you're about to cross the street, there's a fair chance you'll not walk out in front of it and get squashed. But if I were to say, "Blop zat hro mong!" you'd chuckle as you walked into a rather nasty encounter with the wrong end of said bus. And grammar, dear reader, is the glue that cements our language together. We need grammar so we can string our tens of thousands of words together in a way that makes them consistent and intelligible. We have a limited (albeit enormous and growing) number of words at our disposal, but the number of ways we can combine those words, or the number of sentences we can compose, is limitless. Now you see why we need a few grammatical rules! Think of a common example of speech, such as when you're describing something ... How do you organise all your adjectives? It's not just willy-nilly! There's a grammatical rule that's based on logic to determine the order of our modifiers, and because it's based on logic and order, we hardly ever really stop and think about what we're doing. Look at this sentence: She went to teach in the little red tumbledown school house. That just sounds "right," doesn't it? But you'd be twitching slightly if I had written: She went to teach in the school, tumbledown, red, little house. Why? Because we instinctively go from the general to the specific when looking at our relationship with things in our world, and our grammar reflects this so we can all make ourselves instantly understood. So, back to our sentence ... 'the' is the most general modifier of all (well, apart from 'a' or 'an'), size is the next most general modifier. Think about all the things that exist in the world and every one of them can be classified as small or smaller (or big or bigger) ... so size is a pretty general way to classify things. Our next modifier is 'red.' There are a limited number of different colours, so this is still quite a general modifier. Next is 'tumbledown' ... presumably while there are number of places falling down out there, there aren't as many of these as there well-built houses, so this is less general and more specific. Then we come to 'school' ... this time, it's a very specific modifier, because there aren't many houses that are school houses. We looked at the Royal Order of Adjectives some time ago, and you'll find a detailed list of the different modifiers there. And you can read a detailed account of how language evolved in this fascinating little book by anthropologist and linguist, Robbins Burling. It's called The Talking Ape, and as you may have guessed, I've been reading it recently. If you have a passion for something ... anything, and you're thinking of writing about it, you'll appreciate this excellent program by best-selling author Nick Daws about how to write a book. This week's Little Something Extra also has a series of tips from first-time author, Sherri Rifkin, that explains how to use all the new social networking sites, multi-media tools and other online resources to promote your book. Many people (no, not you, I know that) are already spending hours (and hours) on these sites (think Flikr, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube as well as all the blog sites) so you may as well be doing something productive while there! And a story from Joanna about the importance of choosing your words carefully ... As their first assignment, the English students are asked to write a paper about their summer. One student wrote a paper about going to the coast and getting a summer job on a fishing boat. He described how, without any skills, he was still able to obtain work as a "bait boy" on the boat. It was his job to make sure the bait was provided, cut up, if necessary, and even put on the hooks if the customers wanted him to do that. He did well, was given more responsibilities, and advanced quickly in the job. By the summer, he had done so well that he was made "master baiter."
This week's quiz: Let's see what sort of a Mover and Shaker you'd make ... match up these terms with their meanings: speculators, call, delta, cartel, liquidity, condor, contango, stochastic, bull market, tariff 1. the amount by which the price of an option changes for every unit move in the underlying security 2. being or having a random variable 3. when several companies who dominate a market form an agreement between themselves to maintain price levels. Usually highly illegal; most countries will have bodies which attempt to ensure that there is competition within a market 4. people who trade securities for the express purpose of making a profit on some expected change in their value rather than for any interest in owning the goods themselves 5. readiness to buy or sell significant quantities of a security at any time 6. an option that gives the holder the right to buy the underlying stock at a specific price for a specific period of time 7. where share prices are generally rising 8. selling or buying of two options with consecutive exercise prices, together with the sale or purchase of one option with an immediately lower exercise price and one option with an immediately higher exercise price 9. tax on goods as they cross a border; usually imposed on imports by a government to provide an advantage to its indigenous businesses 10. the postponement of payment by the buyer of stock on the payment of a premium to the seller; the premium or interest paid by the buyer to the seller, to be allowed to defer paying for the stock purchased until the next fortnightly settlement day Did you know that every newsletter is archived? So if you've missed anything since 1998 or want to revisit some favourites, you can do so any time! Don't forget to bookmark the page when you get there ... or even make it your Home Page. (For Internet Explorer, just click on Tools ... Internet Options ... General ... fill in www.write101.com/archives/index.htm and click OK. For Netscape, select Edit ... Preferences. Then select Navigator from the left menu, click Home Page and enter the URL above next to Location and click OK. For all the flash new browsers, you'll have to do a search on my mate google to find what to do. There's a search box on the archives page!) If you've received this little missive from a friend, you can get your very own issue, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed every Friday morning by clicking here: mailto:WritingTips-subscribe@yahoogrups.com And I'm even prepared to offer a shameless bribe. An Ape that wants to play Hamlet after being type-cast as King Kong, a talking anvil and that rottweiller ... Dr Morgenes is still caught in the nightmare that is the casting couch. Help him find a plot! Just click on the Comments button at the end of the entry to add your contribution. If you have friends who fancy themselves as writers, invite them to contribute (just forward this newsletter in its entirety to them). I often trawl this for comments to post on my site ... so if you say something about the newsletter or site, be warned, you may end up being read by one of the 2,000+ unique visitors who visit Write101 every day! Make your Mark on the World. Then stop by our Map of the World and read the messages. (Just click List) and add your mark. Did you hear about the short fortune teller who escaped from prison? He was a small medium at large! And the two banks with different rates had a conflict of interest ... This following little outline has something to offend just about everyone ... TRADITIONAL CORPORATION Last week's quiz: Match up these fantasy words and you have the start of your novel! wraith, troll, daphnomancy, talisman, necromancy, banshee, paladin, mage, cleromancy, scutage 1. the casting of lots as a means of divination - CLEROMANCY 2. an apparition of a living person supposed to portend his or her death; something shadowy and insubstantial - WRAITH 3. (in the feudal system) a payment exacted by a lord in lieu of military service due to him by the holder of a fee - SCUTAGE 4. someone who fights for a cause - PALADIN 5. in Irish folklore, a spirit in the form of a wailing woman who appears to or is heard by members of a family as a sign that one of them is about to die - BANSHEE 6. supernatural creature of Scandinavian folklore, variously portrayed as a friendly or mischievous dwarf or as a giant, that lives in caves, in the hills or under bridges - TROLL 7. a magician; caste of priests, philosophers and magicians, among the ancient Persians; any holy men or sages of the East - MAGE 8. stone, ring or other object, engraved with figures or characters supposed to possess occult powers and worn as an amulet or charm; anything whose presence exercises a remarkable or powerful influence on human feelings or actions - TALISMAN 9. a method of divination through alleged communication with the dead; black art - NECROMANCY 10. divination by means of the laurel - DAPHNOMANCY
A Little Something Extra Here's a detailed article on how to write great prose, and then read about a writer who's done just that ... Sherri Rifkin has put together a fun yarn about what happens when we force ourselves to step outside our comfort zone. Our heroine has been dumped by her almost-fiancé, she's spent months wallowing in self-pity and her friends finally decide the time has come for her to rejoin the human race. The decision for her to join a group of strangers in a house in the Hamptons for the summer gives her a second chance at happiness and us a glimpse into the lives of the fabulously rich and glam crowd ... about as close as I'm likely to get! As a first-time author, Sherri admits that much of the promotion was up to her, and she's put together her five best tips for promoting her book using online resources ... A
New Job Requirement for Authors Who
knew that one needed to be so thoroughly tech-savvy to be an author? I’m
not just talking about knowing how to create chapter headers in Word (I don’t
but I fake it well enough) or being able to change your printer cartridge.
Nowadays, you have to know how to
blog-vlog-flickr-twitter-facebook-wordpress-upload-youtube-blip.tv in order to
be an author, that is, if you have some hopes of being a successful
commercial author. It helps if you have nice friends who know how to
do all this stuff (I have a Jeff, a Mary and an Anthony) but there are only
so many times you can sweetly plead for their help and certainly a limit on
the number the exclamation points you can put after “Thank you!!!!!!” in
your emails. (Six seems reasonable; seven is just desperate.) I’ve
logged several hours, possibly equaling days at this point, uploading my
book-related videos to the various viral distribution sites, creating the
first of what is sure to be many photo albums on Flickr.com, adding a fan page
on Facebook—and boy is my laptop tired! And I still have a “Book To Do”
list two pages long. Believe me, as a former cable TV marketer for Bravo and Oxygen, I am very grateful to be publishing my novel at a time when all of these free marketing tools are available–especially since I don’t have the same (read: any) budgets to spend on paid marketing placements like I did when I was employed by someone else. Read Sherri's tips on how to promote your book online without spending one penny ... Word of the week: Backwardation (n) theory developed in respect to the price of a futures contract and the contract's time to expire. Backwardation says that as the contract approaches expiration, the futures contract will trade at a higher price compared to when the contract was further away from expiration. This is said to occur due to the convenience yield being higher than the prevailing risk free rate. When backwardation
does occur in a futures market it has been suggested that an individual in the
short position would benefit the most by delivering as late as possible. Sigh ... and we trust our money to these people? Oxymoron of the week: Management integrity And this week's Latin phrase is for those of you who hang out at the Pointy End of Town ... Summam scrutemur ... [SOOM-mahm skroo-TAY-moor] (Let's look at the bottom line ...) Did you know that you can have your very own Latin reminders? How about undies proclaiming, Bene est rex esse? (It's good to be king) Or a shopping bag that warns, Emptrix nata sum (Born to shop)? Kind regards, Jennifer P.S. Want to donate to the upkeep of this newsletter? Just $17 a year seems a small price to pay for all this wit and wisdom, don't you think? C'mon, that's just a tad more than 30 cents a week! 1.Toss a few pennies into my Running Away Fund at PayPal (Send to jennifer @ write101.com ... without the spaces, of course) OR 2. Click here to subscribe for a full year OR 3. Use your credit card on my secure order form. (You can also access the PayPal subscription link from this page if the link above didn't work for you. With PayPal, you can use your credit card, PayPal account or pay online using your own cheque account.) OR 4. Send a cheque (made payable to Jennifer Stewart) To unsubscribe from this list, send
a blank email to: mailto:WritingTips- Copyright Jennifer Stewart 2008 Individual articles copyrighted by their authors. |
