I realize that WheresMyRumball is supposed to be a pseudo travel blog, however if you will indulge me one more post I would like to continue to write about writing. I swear there is a word for that – a word that describes the instance of a verb applying its action to itself, i.e. writing about writing – but I cannot for the life of me or Merriam-Webster figure out what it is.
Reflexive?
Sort of.
The opposite of an oxymoron?
Kind of a stretch, and multiple words.
Titillating?
What? Sorry, I just like that word. It sounds so dirty but it’s not! But then it sort of is, just because you thought about it.
Anyway, whatever the word is, there are only a few activities for which this concept can be applied. A few examples that come not-instantly to mind:
Talking about conversation
Thinking about thought
Writing a blog about the process of blog writing
That last one may just sound silly (try to ignore the sinking feeling in your stomach about what the next several paragraphs of your life may entail, namely great patience) but I am going to pursue it nonetheless. Blog writing is after all what got us here, we may as well explore it in greater depth in order to better understand the blog and thereby formulate an escape plan (that is for you, I am stuck here).
Take tonight. Once again, I arrived home intent on blog writing. I thought I had a topic picked out (it was sooo much more interesting than this, too) but then in crafting sentence number two I stalled out trying to remember a word. A long forgotten, rarely used, possibly non-existent word.
(Don’t you already feel like this entry would be so much better if I could just remember that damn word?)
So I did what I always do when I don’t know something – I turned to the Google. And in case you didn’t believe it was possible, I proceeded to stump the Google. My well-defined query of “what’s the word for when you do something about that same thing” returned zero relevant results. The number one result, in fact, was an article titled “What Men Want in a Relationship” about how women think men want the exact opposite of what they really do want. Clearly my muddled search terms indicated to the Google that I am post-breakup, likely drunk, and possibly thinking about cutting myself hence they directed me to the “Sex & Love” section of powertochange.com.
(The number three result is titled “6 Reasons Why You Might Be Feeling Bad Right Now.” And this is why I have pre-designated a trusted friend who, should I ever meet a sudden end, will immediately delete my browser history.)
When I accepted that I would probably need to refine my search terms slightly in order for the Google to actually help me, I went a different route and typed in “reverse dictionary.” The Google helpfully and immediately pointed me toward the OneLook Reverse Dictionary, which allows users to describe a concept and receive back a list of words and phrases related to that concept. This time, my entry of “a thing that describes itself” returned hundreds of results, a few of the more interesting of which were connotation, self-identity, hermaphrodite, fundamentalist Christianity, and reformed Egyptian.
Perhaps the most accurate on the list was pest.
I was intrigued, however, by another word on the list: paradox. That’s an interesting word. I knew it wasn’t the word I was looking for – quite the opposite in fact. So I pulled up dictionary.com and entered it with the intention of scanning for antonyms. Dictionary.com does not offer any antonyms for paradox.
(Seriously, if you guys could just think of this bloody word and text me, we could be done…)
In scrolling through the dictionary entry for paradox, I lingered for a moment in the section for famous quotations featuring the word. In doing so, I came to a few more realizations. First, I was struck by how much smarter than me old dead famous people are. Thomas Mann, for example, had the following quote: “Paradox is the poisonous flower of quietism, the iridescent surface of the rotting mind, the greatest depravity of all.” Thomas Mann clearly did not have a problem thinking of the word he wanted when he wanted it. I wish he were still with us.
But the quote that I would like to end with is from James Clavell. James, who FYI was an Australian born, British (later naturalized American) novelist, screenwriter, director and World War II veteran and prisoner of war, was quoted as saying “The more I know, the more sure I am I know so little. The eternal paradox.”
To James, I would say this:
Be glad you never met the Google.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Thursday, July 7, 2011
A Midsummer Night’s Blog
In anticipation of the inevitable question – what could have possibly prompted this unprecedented mid-year blog entry? – I am actually going to dedicate the entire first three paragraphs of this post to explaining why on this night of all nights I have decided to write.
In a nutshell, I have decided that if I truly want to do justice to my undergraduate degree in English & Creative Writing and also ultimately pursue a career as a writer someday, then I must start to produce more than one piece of writing per annum. Plus we canceled our HBO and Grey’s Anatomy (which yes I still watch, two words: Jesse Williams) is a rerun.
Now, to any readers out there who may also happen to be my employer or my financial advisors (Bob & April Rinder), no I am not quitting the day job just yet. I have a long way to go before I can move beyond the “aspiring” stage and into full-fledged (read: paid) writerdom. Authorship? Regardless, I am resolved to try.
The hardest part about writing for me has always been titles. I feel, as do many would-be aspiring writers, a great deal of pressure to come up with truly brilliant titles. A brilliant title is not only an enticement for people to read your work, but sometimes, if a title is brilliant enough, it will actually convince them the writing is good. On top of that, a brilliant title will make your work memorable to your readership. It may even prompt readers to promote your writing to their friends and associates. With a little bit of luck, a brilliant title could ultimately result in an exchange like the following:
Reader: I read a good piece of writing the other day.
Friend/Associate: Oh really? What was it called?
Reader: Silhouettes.
Friend/Associate: Ooh great title. What’s it about?
Reader: …um… shadows.
Friend/Associate: Who wrote it?
Reader: No clue.
Because of this tremendous importance of titles, and because I am a procrastinator in the purist sense of the word (see: annual blog postings on December 31st), I invariably leave them for last. In college, my approach for academic paper titles was generally to come up with some play on words or overused cliché (and no, in this case you will see that is actually not an oxymoron) and then add a lengthy and dramatic subtitle that still failed to give any indication of what the paper was actually about. Some examples include:
Shattered Expectations:
The Inconsequence of Ending in Dickens’ Novel
The Inexhaustible Well:
Deepening the Experience of Diego Velazquez’s Las Meninas
Happily Ever After:
Re-imagining Jane Austen’s Emma into Film
Embracing the Savage:
The Triumph of Human Physicality in Orwell’s 1984
I mean I could go on. (For those of you who will appreciate, I did not even dig into the IHUM archives yet…) Anyway, it is clear from the above that the thesaurus was my good friend and constant companion in those days (read: early mornings of the day the paper was due).
For my fiction writing classes, however, I took it to the next level. Because as important as titles are for academic papers, the professor has to read them or at least pretend to in order to assign a grade. For fiction, however, a bad title can kill a story before the reader makes it to page one.
For creative work, therefore, I relied on the brilliance of the words themselves. I came up with what I considered to be a truly awesome word, and then would go to great lengths and artistic sacrifice to somehow weave that word into a critical part of the story (which was at this point written in its entirety and probably due in 20 minutes somewhere on the other side of campus). I picked titles like Etchings, Castaways, Lighthouse, and Silhouettes (you may have heard of it). I once went so far as to choose a girl’s name that I thought was particularly poetic and then proceeded to rename my main character Chloe (thank god for find/replace).
Ironically enough after what I have just shared, I came up with the title of this blog before I had a clue what I was going to write about. It just seemed fitting as I walked home on a warm July evening, intent on blog-writing. It is also a terrible play on literary greatness that is too often clichéd, making it the obvious choice for yours truly.
And yet if you will indulge me for another few paragraphs, I shall attempt to insert meaning where before there was only shoddy wordplay.
A wise friend recently told me that one of the keys to making a goal (read: dream) become a reality is to talk to people about it. The simple but ingenious reason being that once people know you have a goal you are working toward, unless they are forgetful or assholes, they will probably ask you about it the next time they see you. And if you continuously have nothing to share and no progress to report, you’re going to start to feel like a bit of an asshole yourself. You will also lose all credibility as a dream-haver.
So to you my loyal readership, I am entrusting my dream. Or at least this blog. It is now your duty (unless you are forgetful or an asshole) to continue the conversation. Not only do you remain obligated to read whatever I manage to post, you must also heckle me to produce more and better writing. Possibly even other kinds of writing that don’t rely solely on sarcasm and self-depreciation.
And also titles. I really must work on those titles.
In a nutshell, I have decided that if I truly want to do justice to my undergraduate degree in English & Creative Writing and also ultimately pursue a career as a writer someday, then I must start to produce more than one piece of writing per annum. Plus we canceled our HBO and Grey’s Anatomy (which yes I still watch, two words: Jesse Williams) is a rerun.
Now, to any readers out there who may also happen to be my employer or my financial advisors (Bob & April Rinder), no I am not quitting the day job just yet. I have a long way to go before I can move beyond the “aspiring” stage and into full-fledged (read: paid) writerdom. Authorship? Regardless, I am resolved to try.
The hardest part about writing for me has always been titles. I feel, as do many would-be aspiring writers, a great deal of pressure to come up with truly brilliant titles. A brilliant title is not only an enticement for people to read your work, but sometimes, if a title is brilliant enough, it will actually convince them the writing is good. On top of that, a brilliant title will make your work memorable to your readership. It may even prompt readers to promote your writing to their friends and associates. With a little bit of luck, a brilliant title could ultimately result in an exchange like the following:
Reader: I read a good piece of writing the other day.
Friend/Associate: Oh really? What was it called?
Reader: Silhouettes.
Friend/Associate: Ooh great title. What’s it about?
Reader: …um… shadows.
Friend/Associate: Who wrote it?
Reader: No clue.
Because of this tremendous importance of titles, and because I am a procrastinator in the purist sense of the word (see: annual blog postings on December 31st), I invariably leave them for last. In college, my approach for academic paper titles was generally to come up with some play on words or overused cliché (and no, in this case you will see that is actually not an oxymoron) and then add a lengthy and dramatic subtitle that still failed to give any indication of what the paper was actually about. Some examples include:
Shattered Expectations:
The Inconsequence of Ending in Dickens’ Novel
The Inexhaustible Well:
Deepening the Experience of Diego Velazquez’s Las Meninas
Happily Ever After:
Re-imagining Jane Austen’s Emma into Film
Embracing the Savage:
The Triumph of Human Physicality in Orwell’s 1984
I mean I could go on. (For those of you who will appreciate, I did not even dig into the IHUM archives yet…) Anyway, it is clear from the above that the thesaurus was my good friend and constant companion in those days (read: early mornings of the day the paper was due).
For my fiction writing classes, however, I took it to the next level. Because as important as titles are for academic papers, the professor has to read them or at least pretend to in order to assign a grade. For fiction, however, a bad title can kill a story before the reader makes it to page one.
For creative work, therefore, I relied on the brilliance of the words themselves. I came up with what I considered to be a truly awesome word, and then would go to great lengths and artistic sacrifice to somehow weave that word into a critical part of the story (which was at this point written in its entirety and probably due in 20 minutes somewhere on the other side of campus). I picked titles like Etchings, Castaways, Lighthouse, and Silhouettes (you may have heard of it). I once went so far as to choose a girl’s name that I thought was particularly poetic and then proceeded to rename my main character Chloe (thank god for find/replace).
Ironically enough after what I have just shared, I came up with the title of this blog before I had a clue what I was going to write about. It just seemed fitting as I walked home on a warm July evening, intent on blog-writing. It is also a terrible play on literary greatness that is too often clichéd, making it the obvious choice for yours truly.
And yet if you will indulge me for another few paragraphs, I shall attempt to insert meaning where before there was only shoddy wordplay.
A wise friend recently told me that one of the keys to making a goal (read: dream) become a reality is to talk to people about it. The simple but ingenious reason being that once people know you have a goal you are working toward, unless they are forgetful or assholes, they will probably ask you about it the next time they see you. And if you continuously have nothing to share and no progress to report, you’re going to start to feel like a bit of an asshole yourself. You will also lose all credibility as a dream-haver.
So to you my loyal readership, I am entrusting my dream. Or at least this blog. It is now your duty (unless you are forgetful or an asshole) to continue the conversation. Not only do you remain obligated to read whatever I manage to post, you must also heckle me to produce more and better writing. Possibly even other kinds of writing that don’t rely solely on sarcasm and self-depreciation.
And also titles. I really must work on those titles.
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