I am reading new words

I had the pleasure to indulge in reading some more of The Cat Who books the past few days. The fact that I should rather have been writing is a long story, which I won't bore you with.

As I was reading The Cat Who Went up the Creek, I came realise once again how rich the vocabulary of the author is. Words that I had to look up purely because they are not used some much anymore. Or perhaps not by people I know or come into contact with on a daily basis.

While I could look them up online, I went to my trusty Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus first. I have to mention here that the book is on my desk within immediate reach, along with one or two other language references. To my surprise it did not have the first word on my list. Plan B. I went in search of my 1982 edition of the Oxford Concise Dictionary in our library at home. And not only was the first word in there, all the others were too. I do like to expand my vocabulary (English is my second language) but my next thought would be where I could use my new words.

In my fantasy series, The Nations of Peace, my characters have a more formal style of speech making it an opportunity to share at least some of my new words. In my daily life, I am sad to say it would make people think that I am stuck up or pretentious to use words that they have never heard of. Nor would they be able to find their meaning due to unfamiliarity with their spelling. There are exceptions of course, but still it saddens me that so few people of my personal acquaintance read books, printed or electronic. How are we ever going to evolve as a species if our level of literacy are limited to the incomprehensible characters on mobile phone messages? I have even seen that being done by authors on Facebook. That in itself is a deadly sin in my book.

My new words (thank you, Lilian Jackson Braun) are ailurophobe, badinage, rhinitis, nonagenarian, sylvan, sepulchral, Falernum, iambic and propitious.

If you come across a word in a book that you are not familiar with, do you look it up, or do you ignore it?

Guest Post: Writing’s not for Cissies by Richard Beynon

Writing is tough. In fact, I don’t know of any activity that is more difficult than writing. I know this is not so for every writer. There are some gifted individuals, as disparate as Joyce Carol Oates on the one hand, and Nora Roberts on the other, who write seemingly without effort, turning out vast numbers of books and, even more impressively, vast numbers of pages a day.

Nora Roberts is famous for publishing, on a quite routine basis, some ten novels a year. She is loved by her readers, and despised by the critics. Joyce Carol Oates, loved by both critics and readers, in her prime wrote forty five pages a day.

These are the outliers. Speaking for myself, and for many writers, both published and unpublished, I know that the process of developing story that is both rich and inevitable is just about as exhausting as anything can be.

And yet, we persist, because the personal rewards are so great – and the lure of professional, not to say, financial, success, as distant as it may sometimes seem, so enticing.

I’d like to dwell on one particular personal reward for a moment.

A curious phenomenon has been playing itself out in the US for some years now, which a couple of observers have started drawing attention to. On the one hand, talk therapy has been in decline for a decade or two. Woody Allen might, famously, have consulted a therapist five times a week for decades – but people like him are in a shrinking minority.

At the same time, writing schools, both academic and non-academic, writing retreats, short writing courses and online writing programmes have flourished as never before.

Everyone and her mother is writing a memoir, or thinking of writing a novel, or secretly has written not just a novel, but a trilogy!

Surely there’s a connection somewhere here? Less talk therapy, more writing. It’s merely a correlation at present, but I’m waiting for the research that shows a causal connection.

Because writing fiction is therapy, even if what we write is the airiest possible piece of romantic froth. To write it demands that we plumb our own experience, and our own feelings and, yes, even our own traumas. Romance in life is never trivial, although romance in fiction is so easily – and so wrongly – dismissed as meaningless nonsense.

Of course, that’s why writing’s difficult: because we have to drill deep to the emotions that drive the fiction. And that process of finding within ourselves the wellsprings of both joy and despair will always leave us wrung out.

Which doesn’t answer the conundrum posed by people like Roberts and Oates – but it does explain, to my satisfaction, why a morning’s brainstorm leaves me beached and panting for the rest of the day.

About the Author

Richard Beynon is an award-winning film and television scriptwriter with a long and accomplished career in the industry. He, together with novelist Jo-Anne Richards, run Allaboutwriting which teaches creative writing face to face in Johannesburg and Cape Town, as well as online – and mentors writers through the process of writing fiction, non-fiction and screenplays. Richard is currently cruising the canals of England, on his narrowboat Patience. Read about it here.

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Book Review (& Tour): Antique Magic by Eileen Harris

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Linzé: I reviewed the first book in the series. Keep an eye out for reviews on the next ones.

It is a fact that I have mentioned on several occasions: I am a huge fan of the amateur sleuth mystery genre, and I have found another author to add to my to-read list.

I volunteered to review the Alicia Trent series written by Eileen Harris, and what a find that turned out to be. The first book, Antique Magic, introduces the series and the main character, Alicia, aka Ali to the reader. I fell in love with Ali, and her partner Barry, almost from the get go. Together they own an antique's store and while I am no collector, the passion the characters show for their vocation could almost convince anyone to start up the hobby.

Antiques come with histories, good or bad, and invariably some mystery will be attached to those histories making for a good background to the series. I like Ali's persistence and enthusiasm to get to the bottom of the mystery she is investigating. Barry is a good supporting character to provide the sidekick role in the series.

The reader are drawn into the details as Ali digs deeper into the mystery and murder that results as the story unfolds. There is a little romance happening, which adds to the realness of the main character, while other characters are depicted in a likeable and realistic way, each with their own uniqueness.

The magic component to the story was unusual, but not overwhelmingly in your face. Ali gets a clue or two from the magical items, but the mystery does not depend on this alone. A definite point in the author's favour.

Like all good mysteries the truth is well concealed, but could be detected by the reader who pays very close attention to the story, and not only to the clues. Even if you are not a sleuth, the story is very enjoyable and the aha! moment not so much of a surprise that it cannot be believed.

Antique Magic earns a well deserved four stars for the first book in a series.

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Me, myself and I - my addiction to writing revealed

Linzé Brandon

I am participating in the Writing Contest: How Writing Has Positively Influenced My Life. Hosted by Positive Writer

Writing often feels the same as getting those unwanted hair waxed, it hurts. Especially that first time. The pain is excruciating, and makes you wonder what the hell made you do it in the first place. Then you go back for the second time. It still hurts, but by now you expect the pain and yet you go back for the third, fourth and fifth time. By then the pain is not so bad anymore and you are fast becoming friends with your beauty therapist.

This is exactly what happened to me. I am talking about writing, the waxing part came later.

Fifteen years ago I wrote my first story. It was not great, but I finished it. Then I wrote another one and another. And by the end of the second year I had my first novel on my desk. I had no idea what to do next, except to keep writing. I tried my hand at the traditional publishing option, but the inevitable rejection followed.

If this sounded like the best time to give up, I probably would have, but by then I was hooked on the pain. Every excruciating word. I had to write. I. Had. To. Write. And I have not stopped since that fateful day in 2001.

Did I want to be writer growing up? The thought never even crossed my mind that I could become a writer. No one in my family has any job outside the usual doctor, lawyer and teacher options. Yeah, then I decided to study engineering. Not a writer, but definitely a first for the family. I started a trend. Every single cousin younger than I, barring two, went on to study engineering. Including my own brother. Some of them, like I, also married engineers. Must be that thing engineers are so good at that clinched it for me. (No, it's not the numbers) That alone should have told me that something was brewing. I loved being an engineer, then I became a specialist and added a second speciality. I went on to study for a masters degree in engineering management, not because I wanted to be a manager, but I wanted to start my own business. It finally hit me: I wanted to be my own boss.

Sometimes even us brainy types can be a bit slow when it comes to life decisions. I wanted to be my own boss. Fancy that. And I was my own boss for ten years. It was then that I started writing.

When self publishing became more widely accepted, I jumped on the bandwagon and got my first novel published, twelve years after I wrote it. What a high! It is that same feeling you get when smoothing your hand over that waxed skin, so soft and smooth. Skin unlike anything you have touched before. Worth the pain? Every time!

Twelve published fictional titles to my name - one more novel this year and two non-fiction books also in the making. My pain has become my addiction, my stress relief from the daily grind, my happy hour every day. And I write every day. Fiction, freelance articles, blog posts like this one, a book review or a technical article. Weekdays and weekends. At a cool word count of over one and a half million fictional words already behind me, I still get a delicious thrill when I get to that point in a story where I can type, the end.

Seeing my name in print...indescribable joy.

Do I want to be a writer when I grow up? Yes, please!

Can you live without your passion?