The Perfect Gift for a Writer: A Dictionary
As the title suggests, I recently received the perfect gift that any writer could get: a dictionary. But this was not just any dictionary. This was a copy of The Compact Oxford English Dictionary. Big whoop, I hear some of you say. Well, actually, it is. The Oxford English Dictionary (2nd Edition) is a 20-volume beast. No joke. Published in 1989, it clocked in at 21,728 pages. And that doesn’t include all the supplement materials that have since been added. The 3rd Edition is still in production and is not expected to be published until 2037. I hate to think how big the Oxford English Dictionary will be by then.
Space… The Final Frontier…
The geek in me is getting incredibly excited. I’ve seen the preview for the new Star Trek movie coming out this week and, oh man… I CAN’T WAIT! Yes, I am a BIG Star Trek fan. I won’t go as far as saying that I dress up like the characters or anything, because I don’t, but I love the stories, I’m in love with the characters, and I get excited with the big space battles. But more importantly, I have many fond memories that are all connected to Star Trek.
Can’t is an evil word… It shouldn’t exist.
Recently, scrolling through my Twitter feed, I came across a post about the wonderful word can’t. If you say you cant, you are only bullshitting yourself (As much as I would have loved to shown you the original tweet, the user has long since left Twitter.) You ignore the little bit of swearing, but of course I had to reply.
Writing helps sooth the savage beast…
There are many psychologists out there that will gladly tell you that art, in its varied forms, is a great therapeutic tool. Drawing is often used with children to help them deal with whatever is troubling them, helping them to express their thoughts on paper, albeit in a cryptic fashion. Writing is like that for me.
Musical Support
Many of us have that one special someone in our lives that helps drive us forward. It doesn’t need to be a spouse or partner. It could be a parent, a sibling… a friend. They are the one person that will help you pick up the pieces when your world comes crashing down around you. For me, that one person is my husband.
Editing Headaches…
Editing… The dreaded beast seems to have come to haunt me again. Just when I thought I had finished with this manuscript, there it is again. The revisions just go on, and on, and on, and on… Did I mention that they go on and on?
When you’re writing, it’s the inner critic that whispers sweet little nothings about self-doubt that just won’t go away. If you’re anything like me, you type so fast that sometimes your brain struggles to keep up; the spelling goes out the window and the autocorrect monster just gobbles up that carefully chosen word… without you noticing!
But the editor in me can’t just let a new piece of writing go unchecked. I always go back and reread what I had written after a break (even a break as short as a toilet break). I see the punctuation errors, the grammar flaws, and the faults in the writing itself. I struggle in a big way to shut off the editor brain long enough to actually do any writing.