There are a lot of amusing and beguiling collective nouns for creatures, such as a parliament of owls, a murder of crows, a charm of goldfinches, a clowder of cats, a kindle of kittens, a murmuration of starlings, a sloth of bears and an ambush of tigers.
Collective nouns for professions are less common, but they do exist. Should you have a group of butlers, they’d be known as a draught. Jurors are collectively known as a damning, while the rise of portrait painters in the Renaissance, who sometimes painted flattering representations of their wealthy clients, led to them being called a misbelief of painters. Personal relationships have resulted in less than happy collective nouns: a group of husbands is an unhappiness, while wives are an impatience.
After knuckling down to another campaign of querying recently, I found myself wondering about what to call writers, agents, publishers and readers en masse.
* Writers working alone—a loneliness.
* Rejected writers—a frustration.
* Traditionally published authors—a smugness.
* Self-published authors—a hopefulness…or maybe a defiance.
I finished reading Philip Pullman’s La Belle Sauvage last night, in which a benign witch called Tilda Vasara makes a timely appearance. She casts a spell of invisibility that cloaks two child protagonists, and the baby they’re protecting, meaning their pursuers can’t see them. Tilda only sticks around for four pages, but her presence influenced my dreaming.
Trapped in a tedious dream about filing and form filling, undoubtedly caused by sending off four queries to fussy literary agents that evening, I was thrilled to see the witch from His Dark Materials trilogy, Serafina Pekkala fly into view. She appeared as played by actress Eva Green in the film adaptation, which was a bonus, but stayed for only a moment, saying “It’ll soon be over,” before zooming off on her broomstick. I presume she was referring to querying, which I should finish tonight.
It was nice to see one of my fictional crushes, and it made me think about which other fictional female characters I fancy.
Lisbeth Salander, from the Millennium series by Stieg Larsson is a wildly unconventional anti-hero, a mix of vulnerability and sociopathy. Not an easy person to be around, she might well scare the living daylights out of me!
Lastly and less frighteningly, is Bathsheba Everdene from Thomas Hardy’s Far From The Madding Crowd.
She’s passionate and spirited and beguiling. Her determined independence is attractive—not just to me—I’ve known several recently-divorced women who chose her as a role model.
As for my man crush, it’d be Aragorn, from The Lord Of The Rings, as played by Viggo Mortensen in the films. He’d better be gentle with me!
In my own writing, my crush would be for a character called Alice from a novella called Is It Her?, who only appears in retrospect, mainly through the memories of her husband who accompanied her to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland for an assisted suicide to end her suffering from cancer. She also makes herself felt through a loving and practical email she’d time-delayed to be delivered a month into her husband’s widowhood. I imagined her looking like the actress Patricia Clarkson.
How about you?
Who’s your crush?
If they’ve appeared in a film adaptation, were they well cast?
Merriam Webster’s online dictionary site has added a feature they call Time Traveller.
It’s a vaguely unsettling way of dating oneself, especially when you realise how young some words are, and also how so many have fallen into disuse…because you’ve certainly never heard of them!
I was born in 1954, which spawned such words as boonies, buyback, cash flow, junk mail, sleaze and wheeler-dealer. The word wonk also appeared—which means: “a person preoccupied with arcane details or procedures in a specialized field.” Considering how much I study the world of writing and publishing, I’m a wonk! My spellchecker doesn’t like it, suggesting that I replace the ‘o’ with an ‘a’!
Anyone in need of writing prompts could use the words from their year to create a story, using every one.
While reading newsletters from publishing sites and authors’ blogs this morning, it struck me how peculiar some writers’ names are.
Even the most famous of authors haven’t seen their names passed on into common usage. Have you ever met anyone called Bram (Stoker), Hunter (S. Thomson) or Ayn (Rand)?
Other old-fashioned names are seeing a resurgence in popularity. Apparently, Willa (Cather) and Anaïs (Nin) are increasingly common for girls…the latter without the correct diaeresis over the letter i.
Willa Cather
Oscar (Wilde) is chosen for boys these days—perhaps as a sign of people being more comfortable with different sexualities—or indicative of a rise in ‘stage mums’ wishing to propel their son into the Hollywood film industry!
I’ve never known a Kingsley (Amis), Ogden (Nash), Danielle (Steel), Dashiell (Hammett), Ambrose (Bierce) or Harriet (Beecher Stowe), though these were more common in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Dashiell Hammett
Some writers are known by the initials of their forenames or they add initials to their moniker to make themselves sound distinctive. J. K. Rowling is the best-known modern example, though that was subterfuge on the part of her publisher to conceal that she was female, as it was thought that boy readers wouldn’t take to a story about wizards written by a woman. This sort of marketing deceit is referred to as ‘gender neutral’. I noticed that saying J.K. quickly sounds like “Jake” which adds to the deception, though the J comes from her first name of Joanne, and, as she doesn’t have a middle name, she chose K in memory of her paternal grandmother Kathleen. She likes to be known as Jo. I wonder how many books she’d have sold as Joanne Rowling or Jo Rowling…or would word of mouth praise have carried her books to bestseller status anyway?
Other authors who added initials to their names include Ian M. Banks…he added the M for his sci-fi books and it came from his intended middle name of Menzies. The reinventor of the Doctor Who series screenwriter Russell T. Davies added the T to distinguish himself from a newsreader of the same name.
If you choose to go this way with your author’s name, then how you punctuate your initials can cause repercussions.
Pen names are common among writers. I started out calling myself Augustus Devilheart, but came out of hiding to be just me. I have a middle name—John—which I never use, though official databases list it.
All the unusual names I’ve encountered with authors, made me wonder what strange name I could add to Paul Whybrow. I was born in a cottage in Walkern Road, Stevenage, Hertfordshire. Walkern is a village three miles from Stevenage. Thus, I could become Paul Walkern Whybrow. I don’t know if that makes me sound distinguished or archaic! It makes me think of a Wyvern, which is a two-legged dragon so I could use Wyvern to distinguish any fantasy writing I may do.
Do you use your initials in your writer’s name?
Do you have a pen name?
Is your name unusual enough to be a marketing aid?
What made-up middle name would you add to your identity as an author?
I spent the first two weeks of 2019 lost in the intricacies of re-editing the first novel I wrote. Using the Word Search function to track down multiple uses of ‘this’, ‘thought’ and ‘realised’ feels less like writing and more like looking for a needle in a haystack.
I’ve edited The Perfect Murderer countless times before and it’s all been at this nit-picking level. It’s hard to appreciate how I’ve improved the manuscript, but I know this tedious work needs to be done. I went to bed most nights feeling disenchanted. I relaxed by reading before turning the light out. With three novels on the go, I gave up on one where the author repeatedly used the same verbs, adjectives and adverbs. I groaned when I saw he’d written the word ‘little’ four times in two pages. Did anyone at his publisher edit this?
I contemplated returning to editing my manuscript, confident that my book will be a damned sight better prepared than a well-reviewed published novel!
It’s easy to become disheartened as a writer, and I’ve previously posted about the doubt that afflicts us and the resilience we need to get through.
After I completed editing, I returned to the querying and self-promotion trail, which I’m not really enjoying…but, there’s no choice.
I’ve decided to adopt a fresh attitude to my endeavours, inspired by the tongue-in-cheek lyrics of an old Don McLean song, which was the earworm I woke up with this morning. Instead of nervously seeking validation for my writing and trying to be an interesting chap through blogging and social media posting, I’ll be viewing myself as totally irresistible!
I don’t know if this will work, but why worry, when I can be happy?
A strange article appeared in today’s The Free Dictionary newsletter. Filk music has been around for a long time, it seems.
We’ve all heard of fan fiction, and I knew about comic conventions, where fans dress up as their favourite characters, but this is the first time I’ve become aware of music based on science fiction and fantasy writing.
It takes all sorts, I guess.
If you write Fantasy or Science Fiction are you also a filker?
Your destiny may be written in the stars, but perhaps you can get a clue of where you’re bound from the lines on the palm of your hands.
Palmistry or Cheirology proponents claim that if the Head Line on your palm ends in a tassel-like fork on the Mound of Luna, then you possess a creative ability with words.
The deeper that the fork extends into the Mound of Luna, the more a person retreats into imaginary worlds, with a natural talent for using words. The wider the fork, the more adaptable and resourceful you are.
Apparently, the dominant hand shows the person’s actual development, while the non-dominant hand shows latent talents and potential.
Gawping at my own wrinkled mitts, I find proof of my schizoid personality, for my right dominant hand shows a Writer’s Fork that’s entirely disconnected from the Head Line. It’s as if it was dashed onto my palm, breaking the fork off, so that it’s laying beneath the Head Line and moreover facing my wrist rather than the side of my hand. D’oh!
On the other hand, literally, my left Writer’s Fork looks like it was branded into my skin, being red, deep and clear.
I’m not sure what to make of this, though I am a Thursday’s child—who ‘has far to go’ according to the old nursery rhyme, so perhaps I should start writing stories in longhand using my potent left hand!
Well, I was wondering if authors resemble the books that they write…could you pick out the sci-fi writers from romance authors and those who pen historical sagas (with a goose quill pen) should you be at a writers’ conference?
I don’t think that I look particularly homicidal, though I’ve been writing crime novels for the last five years. If anything, my long curly hair and beard might lead people to suspect that I’m a sci-fi author or someone who churns out dire outlaw biker thrillers, or maybe non-fiction about counter-culture and rock musicians.
Guessing what someone does for a job is occasionally easy, especially if you’ve hung around with that crowd. It hardly needs Sherlock Holmes’ powers of observation, to identify which people are farmers in a pub bar—their clothing, weather-beaten complexions, footwear and unkempt hairstyles all give them away. I once worked as a barman in an inn that was close to a police station and Crown Court: it was simple to tell the difference between the coppers and the legal eagles, even in plain clothes. There was also a town pub notorious for being fraternised by criminals, and I observed many similarities between ever-watchful and cynical law-breakers and their pursuers, the observant detectives who believe no one’s story.
An author’s appearance can be crucial in helping to market and sell their books. I’ve previously ranted on about how some literary agencies and publishers have a roster of clients that looks like a modelling agency.
All the same, it’s impossible for any of us to escape a tendency to have a stereotypical image of how a genre writer should look. As I contemplate creating an online persona to market my Cornish Detective series, I’ve been wondering daft things, such as should I acquire a long wax-proof coat for my author picture, along with a sturdy walking pole—my protagonist detective has both—for me to be artfully posed on a Bodmin Moor granite crag? Shoot me, now!
These are the sort of things that authors agonise over, as this article about famed photographic portraitist Marion Ettlinger reveals. Sadly, the article doesn’t show her photographs, but here’s a link to her website.
Some of her images hint at what sort of books an author writes, or, at least their stance and clothing suggest their style.
One aspect of marketing that amuses me, is how the dust jacket end flap shows a photograph of the author from 20 years ago, back when his skin was tight and his hair profuse and he didn’t look like one of the Walking Dead. I wonder if the choice is at the author’s insistence (I’m forever young!) or the publicity department is blatantly conning the reading public.
So, do you look like the author of your book?
Could a reader guess that you write fantasy stories?
Do all writers of children’s books look friendly and approachable, open to new experiences—like adult-sized children?
I came across a reference to Sturgeon’s Law, which has made me more philosophical about getting worked up when I read a book that is so bad that I can’t believe it got published.
Apparently, someone commented to the noted science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon, that ninety percent of science fiction was crud, to which he retorted, “But, 90% of everything is crud.”
For me, a book needs to be a key that opens something within me. If the teeth don’t line up with the tumblers of my soul, then I reject it…though, it may unlock doors for other readers. As the old saying goes, ‘One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.’
It’s still a shame that many best-selling books are so badly written!
While approaching literary agents and publishers in the last couple of months, my memory drifted back to some old Peanuts cartoon strips.
I’m sure that we all recognise the situations below. Snoopy often begins his stories with the phrase ‘It was a dark and stormy night.’ This was coined by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who was an influential English novelist of the nineteenth century.
