The beautiful fluidity of language

Grand Tetons photo taken by me

At one point in my life I wanted to be a linguist. At another, an interpreter. I've studied a few languages, and now I'm a writer, so I guess you could say I have a lifelong interest in words. I'm pretty good at knowing what proper grammar is, but I'm fascinated by the way people use the English language in everyday speech.

Those of us who care, know that you can lie down, but you must lay something down. But nobody talks that way! I go in the house to lay down when I'm speaking out loud. It would sound so affected to say I'm going to lie down.

So the present tense of lie is becoming lay. Some day it will be standard English. That's the way standard English is formed, by usage. I love that about words. They are constantly being shifted and molded by the ways we use them.

There are people who want to capture words and set them in stone so that they never change. That will never happen! Language is a living thing. The only languages that are not changing are the dead languages, Latin, ancient Greek, things like that.

Someone mentioned the difference between the words 'that' and 'which'.* The first word is supposed to be used when removing it would make the sentence unclear. The building that is on the right is the one you should enter. Without the clause *that is on the right*, you don't know which building it is. Contrast with this. The building, which is painted green, is on the right. You can removed the *which* clause and the you still know which building it is. It's the one on the right, which happens to be painted green.

Anyway, someday those usages won't matter any more either, because the shifting sands of language will have covered up the difference. And the winds of time will have uncovered brand new words and brand new usages that we don't even know about yet.

It's beautiful.

*I know the single quote belongs inside the period for  Americans, but if the British can do it that way, and if I prefer it that way, I can do it on my own blog. It makes more sense, OK?

7 Summer Writing Goals for the Neurotic

I'm a teacher. I love what I do, but I'm ready for summer break. Summer is the time when I feel the stress in my shoulders dissipate and my fingers get that electric writing tingle. They know that for the next eight weeks they will have unlimited freedom to dance across the keyboard.

I seem to get my best story ideas in summer, too. Maybe it's because I sleep better and don't worry as much, but the ideas often flow faster in the lazy heat of June and July. Sometimes I can't even keep up with them.

Many of you know from previous posts that I am a goal setter. So of course, I have my summer goals to keep up with!

1. Write every day. (Well, duh. Doesn't everyone do that anyway?)

2. Write one short story every week. (That one might be reaching a bit for me.)

3. Stop writing in parenthesis. (Okay, I don't--hey, wait a minute...)

4. Blog weekly on All Things Writing and Loesch's Muse.

5. Set up a blog tour for my urban fantasy, Nephilim which is due out July 18 from Lyrical Press, Inc.

6. Re-write my YA.

7. Start that new manuscript that keeps waking me up at night.

Seven goals. Don't know if I'll conquer them all, but I'm giving it a shot.

So what about you? What are your summer goals?

How to conduct a signing

I got a good lesson in how a signing ought to go today from Janice Hamrick, a fellow mystery writer I met at Malice Domestic this year. She's the winner of the Mystery Writers of America/Minotaur Books competition for 2010, which means she got her book published by Minotaur! Which means it's an awesome book. I'm not very far into it, having just purchased it a few hours ago, but the beginning drew me right in. It's called DEATH ON TOUR and links can be found on her webpage, http://janicehamrick.com/index.html.

Some of the readers here may be giving talks at signings, but some may be wondering how in the heck they'll do it when the time comes. I'm one of the latter.

What I'm going to hold up as an example here is her presentation. Her launch party was at Book People at noon on Sunday, the 29th. Crackers and cheese, cookies, and wine were on a sideboard, which was a nice touch. They were convenient to munch on while we waited in the signing line at the end.

Here's how it should be done! Janice ignored the podium and came to stand directly in front of the audience, who filled the folding chairs, some having to stand in the back. She has a friendly, relaxed way of speaking and doesn't use any notes.

She started off telling about herself, a bit about her childhood in Kansas and some funny tornado stories (yes, that can be done). She related moving from Kansas to Austin, working as a technical writer, and her love of travel. Then she got to the trip she took to Egypt and how the tour gave her so many ideas for a mystery. She came home bursting with them and began to write immediately, finishing in nine months. Then she told about submitting, rejections, and winning the contest that got her published. Smooth transitions and smooth delivery. She connects with the audience, smiles at them, and gets smiles back.

That's the way to do it, folks! I wish I'd taped it. Here's a picture I took the other night of Janice with her display at the same bookstore.

Of course, much as I study her, I don't think I can speak without notes in a million years. Will have to take drugs to relax enough to stand up without shaking, and will probably need to prop myself with a podium. And I hope, when the time comes, I can think of as many witty and engaging things to say as Janice did, but I wouldn't put real money on that bet. I have something to aim for, though.

I'm having a signing, by the way, this Friday, June 3rd, at Hill Country Bookstore on the square in Georgetown, 719 South Main Street, during the First Friday (shops open late, music, food, etc.) My signing is a drop in/drop out thing from 5-8, so I don't have to give a speech. (whew). Wine and beer are furnished by the store, but I'm going to add chocolate. Cookies if I get a chance. But at least chocolate!

What's in Your Closet?

Do writers get depressed more than--other people? I was going to say--normal people, but who's normal? A writer on one of the lists I'm on recently sounded depressed and we all jumped in with our remedies. Is there a writer who doesn't have his own closet of depression aids?

Maybe it goes with the territory. After all, the reason I write is to stave off depression. It's one of the tools in my closet. It just dawned on me, while reading the aforementioned online list, that maybe the reason I'm writing humor is because of the value of funny books for me.

Here are the weapons in my anti-depression closet.

(1) Writing. It doesn't matter what kind. Any kind. A therapist once asked me what I'd be doing if I could do anything I want. Without hesitation, I told her I'd write. She ordered me to carve out at least an hour every week to write, with the door shut, not answer the phone or doorbell, tell hubby to tend the kids--and write. It was pure heaven and saved my sanity!

(2) Reading funny books. I keep funny books together on a shelf. I used to use James Thurber exclusively. Then I added the Jeeves books by P. G. Wodehouse. Then I discovered David Sedaris. Any of these will have me laughing out loud eventually, no matter how far down I've gone. When I was a young child, a doctor had a column in the local paper (although maybe it was a national column). People wrote in with health problems. Most of the time, the recommended cure was "belly breathing", whatever that is. (NOTE: I LIKE the punctuation outside the comma--so shoot me.) Well, my recommended cure is belly laughing.

(3) 250 mgs. of magnesium daily. Don't ask me why, but this seems to help. A lot.

(4) My Attagirl list. I keep this on the computer. I label emails with this and keep them in a folder. Whenever someone says something nice about my writing I put it there. So when I'm having those days when I KNOW my writing sucks and no one would ever want to read such sludge, I can pull those emails up and re-read them. Know what? I never do. But I know they're there, and that's a help.

(4) Therapy, of course. When I go over the edge, that's what I know I have to do. I'll share a funny "depressed writer" story about therapy. My therapist asked me to write a piece personifying my depression and bring it to our next session. My depression turned out to be an adult male (who knows?) who was constantly beside me telling me those things depression tells a person. About how I'm useless, don't bother, no one cares about me, why should they, I'm not worth it, etc. I was driving and he was in the passenger seat berating me. I knew I had to murder him (I'm a mystery writer, after all). So I drove onto a high overpass and went over the rail. As the car plunged down, carrying both of us with it, I knew he'd be dead at the bottom. It was a good feeling. My therapist was a little alarmed, but I assured her I wasn't suicidal at the moment. I'd just killed off my depression. I, as the writer, survived.

Are you a writer? Do you get depressed? What's in your closet?

The image is owned by Simon Palmer and is licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

Where in the World Could Mary Ann Be?

It's been a crazy couple of weeks! You may have noticed I didn't update my blog at all last week. Don't worry faithful friends, I didn't fall off the face of the earth--at least not yet. It's just that life has been hectic. School is wrapping up with only three weeks till summer and I have a major project going on with my fourth graders right now. We are tackling Shakespeare in the Courtyard and while the kids are ready, the tech end is still kind of a nightmare. So my thoughts have been occupied with ironing out the kinks.

The other thing that has occupied my time is freelance writing. I try to limit my projects so that I'm not overwhelmed, taking a few clients at a time. But July is fast approaching, and since that is Nephilim's release date, the marketing fever has begun to take hold. It's time to buy ads, to promote, to shout from the roof tops that my book is coming out, that you must buy it, that reading it will make you smarter, younger, sexier, and somehow richer. But in order to market effectively, it takes more than pretty words.

It takes money.

I have a love /hate thing going on with the money. I love it. It hates me. I know it hates me because it slips through my fingers like water, drifting away to things like food and bills before I truly have a chance to love it. So I've been forced to work harder for it! I've taken on extra writing jobs so I can pay for an ad in Woman's Day or pay for smaller ads in various places.

So to make a long story short (too late), that's why I've been out of pocket. However, the madness will end next week and I will being anew.

If I haven't made myself sick from lack of rest or pulled my hair out from frustration!