pride is a word I was taught to hate but have come to love, because of how strongly I feel it for Jake
swear to god, gigolo is one of the funniest words in the English language.
I literally don’t know where to draw the line between “acceptable slang shortenings of longer words” and “fuck you, you’re offensive”
“match” is such a weird word
match match match match
What a happiness this must have been seventy or eighty years ago and upwards, to those chosen few who had the good luck to be born on the eve of this festival of all festivals; when the whole earth was so overrun with ghosts, boggles, bloody-bones, spirits, demons, ignis fatui, brownies, bugbears, black dogs, specters, shellycoats, scarecrows, witches, wizards, barguests, Robin-Goodfellows, hags, night-bats, scrags, breaknecks, fantasms, hobgoblins, hobhoulards, boggy-boes, dobbies, hob-thrusts, fetches, kelpies, warlocks, mock-beggars, mum-pokers, Jemmy-burties, urchins, satyrs, pans, fauns, sirens, tritons, centaurs, calcars, nymphs, imps, incubuses, spoorns, men-in-the-oak, hell-wains, fire-drakes, kit-a-can-sticks, Tom-tumblers, melch-dicks, larrs, kitty-witches, hobby-lanthorns, Dick-a-Tuesdays, Elf-fires, Gyl-burnt-tales, knockers, elves, rawheads, Meg-with-the-wads, old-shocks, ouphs, pad-foots, pixies, pictrees, giants, dwarfs, Tom-pokers, tutgots, snapdragons, sprets, spunks, conjurers, thurses, spurns, tantarrabobs, swaithes, tints, tod-lowries, Jack-in-the-Wads, mormos, changelings, redcaps, yeth-hounds, colt-pixies, Tom-thumbs, black-bugs, boggarts, scar-bugs, shag-foals, hodge-pochers, hob-thrushes, bugs, bull-beggars, bygorns, bolls, caddies, bomen, brags, wraiths, waffs, flay-boggarts, fiends, gallytrots, imps, gytrashes, patches, hob-and-lanthorns, gringes, boguests, bonelesses, Peg-powlers, pucks, fays, kidnappers, gallybeggars, hudskins, nickers, madcaps, trolls, robinets, friars’ lanthorns, silkies, cauld-lads, death-hearses, goblins, hob-headlesses, bugaboos, kows, or cowes, nickies, nacks [necks], waiths, miffies, buckies, ghouls, sylphs, guests, swarths, freiths, freits, gy-carlins [Gyre-carling], pigmies, chittifaces, nixies, Jinny-burnt-tails, dudmen, hell-hounds, dopple-gangers, boggleboes, bogies, redmen, portunes, grants, hobbits, hobgoblins, brown-men, cowies, dunnies, wirrikows, alholdes, mannikins, follets, korreds, lubberkins, cluricauns, kobolds, leprechauns, kors, mares, korreds, puckles korigans, sylvans, succubuses, blackmen, shadows, banshees, lian-hanshees, clabbernappers, Gabriel-hounds, mawkins, doubles, corpse lights or candles, scrats, mahounds, trows, gnomes, sprites, fates, fiends, sibyls, nicknevins, whitewomen, fairies, thrummy-caps, cutties, and nisses, and apparitions of every shape, make, form, fashion, kind and description, that there was not a village in England that had not its own peculiar ghost.
Writers Must Read!
Here’s my answer to the #20. Something that grinds gears and may be an unpopular opinion.
If you do not read, you will never be a writer.
Let me clarify.
The written word is an ages old craft. There is literally thousands of documents showing this craft. Utilize them. Go to a bookstore, now. Buy some books. No money? Library. No library? Download it. If you’re reading this, you’re on the internet so you have some means of acquiring books.
And read from a breadth of sources. You may want to write Westerns but you need more than Louis L’amour and Bret Harte. Read Huxley and King and Steinbeck. Learn from these other themes and genres. Find what works, what makes them tick, what breathes life into them and makes you fall in love with their worlds and characters and themes. Use them in your works, hammer them and play with them and see what you can make of the paragraph and the pacing and cadence of word choice.
Don’t. For the fuckmothering love of little baby monkeys, DO NOT simply go to tvtropes and wile away an afternoon. Doing that only gives you the barest, vaguest idea of what you’re dealing with. Theory without practice in the worst sense of the concept.
If you’re part of a writer’s circle or any group, show some love for your group. Read their work and have them read yours. Discuss the work. Discuss what you liked and what you didn’t like. Don’t just look for common proofreading errors. Get a feel for the piece. Know the piece. Think of ways that you would present the information they presented, for better or worse, and make note of that for when you are writing. This is what forwards you and your craft.
Everyone wants comments and love and adoration. Pay it forward. Like the above, if you want it, you start giving it just as much. Read and re-read the things you like to know why you liked it, to know why you didn’t like it.
But never, never ignore the other half of your so called artistic calling. Writing and reading, reading and writing are talents one in the same. Anyone who says otherwise knows nothing of either.
Can reply/addend as the question-asker?
Read from lots of different perspectives, not just genres. Huxley, King, Steinbeck, L’amour, Harte = all white dudes from the West, all pretty well-off. I’m not specifically picking on your choices, Rollem — I’m sure you read plenty of not white, straight, rich dudes — but the point stands that those are what came to mind first. They often do, when you mention “classics”.
So… yeah. Read lots of different things by different types of people, writers!
I didn’t really notice it until this year, but with every thing I read – and especially if it’s outside of my normal haunts (sci-fi and speculative fiction) – I can FEEL myself improving. for example, I’m currently reading Kat’s pseudo-Victorian romance novel and some perspectives and ways of using language from that leaked into my latest short story (about a man’s bitterness over an answered prayer). nothing to do with Victorian England, but improved upon by the simple act of reading.
Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of a lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (via kellysteed-kellyrroberts)
enjoy is a word full of wonderfulness when you stop to look at it
because en- means “in or into”
and then joy
into joy
“I enjoy you”
“I am brought into joy by you”
BEAUTIFUL
spurt
#1 on my list of words that instantly make me think of sex but totally turn me off