Someday I will write an Experimenters Manifesto. We need more people who take risks to try something new.
On Saturdays, we at the Write Practice experiment.
We break rules because rules, in the realm of writing, do not exist. The best we get is best practices, and even those have their exceptions.
We break rules to be fresh and to have fun and to free ourselves from the mental prison of our internal editors.
We break rules because it's good practice to do so. And if you haven't figured it out yet, we're all about practice.
Never Make Up Words?
Earlier this week, Liz said the following in her post about the beloved hyphen:
No, I am absolutely not suggesting that you try to actually create your own words. You’re not Shakespeare.
But I suggest the opposite. You can be just as good as Shakespeare. Better even. But first, you will have to take some risks to be unique. You will have to break some rules.
So today, let's try creating some new words.
The question though is how do you create your own words?
Usually I find it's easiest to create new adjectives. Just add the endings -ness, -like, -esque, -y, to nouns.
For example, this morning, my friend Rene bought some Dunkin' Donuts for breakfast. They sit on the table. They are donut holes, actually. Munchkins, Dunkin' calls them. They remind me of little suns, balls of burning deliciousness.
So I could say, “I look at the munchkinesque star and think of all the sweet treats in the world.” Alternatively, I could use munchkinlike. Or munchkiny.
You can do this with almost any noun. Give it a try.
PRACTICE
For fifteen minutes, make up as many new adjectives as you can. If you want, you can use them in a sentence:
“She had an iPhonelike mind.”
“His oak tree-esque face never bent in windy circumstances.”
Got it? Questions?
Happy rule breaking.
Here’s my writing practice. Mind, it’s not polished because I follow Natalie Goldman’s recommendations for writing practice from “Writing Down the Bones”, which say to “don’t stop, don’t think, don’t get logical” etc.
“I’m going to be writing, making up words. Not making them up like brambish or purtending, but adding expressives to nounds and making them adjectives – writerly, miserly (though that’s alreayd a word – or padlike. As in, the padlike width of my hand makes it difficult to hold a pen. I bet I can get a better adjective / noun for how hard it is to hold my pen – the mortarish joints of my fingers make it hard to grip hard. The bullet-smooth barrel makes it easy to lose the pen out of my fingers. The death-rattle-like whisper of my hand across the page reminds me that I am alone, but the burblely background noise of hte dishwasher confirms that my solitation is not complete. The tubthumbingness from upstairs just hones in on the absurdity of my assumptioning – as if I can bring forth such things nilly-willy without authority. And who shall make authority? Myself? Or God? Or my parents, and their stoney faced faces that present an aura of authority, an era of immodesty, a pantheonic symulacrum of thrown-together rules, that are purportably for my own good but have the distinguishing effect of turning my once-humble mind into a sycophantic rambled deep in the bowels of my head.
I don’t know what I’m doing here. I’m trying to practice writing by breaking rules. But if I follow his rule to break rules, then I haven’t broken any rules at all! Irnicality of it all; illogicalness is a beautfulness is a wondrousness is an illusionation is an illuminamagic show that boarded the standard six months ago and has yellow innings until the next stop, at which point we will quark and bramble our way past the Platypus (blessed be his image no name no beak – is it a beak? or a bill?) and into the Ionic, Doric, and Sycophantic, the three realms of ancient Grease, and Rhomium, and Lysistratas burning, ashes burning, threes fall down.
Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? Very well, thank you. And yours? Oh, mine is rather infested with cockleburss and cockles and burrs and birds that eat cockleburrs and burds that eat birds, though I’ve never seen a burd before, I only know they come out at night, have three paws on the left and three on the right, can make incredible leaps from one side of the pea plants to the other, and leave little gold farthings when they poop. So instead of catching, or capturing, or rapturing, or rupturing them I’ve taken to feeding them. It’s a rather profitable business you see – in one end goes little birds, attracted & kept silverly happy by the large plants of hneysuckle and soneyhuckle, and out the other end comes gold farthings.. Oh, not every time, mind ou only about once a week. But I am hopefuly that the one I’ve heard (the burd, everybody’s heard, about the burd, well the burd, the burd, the burd is the word) will find an attractive mate, settle down, and make me a big old batch of burdlings. So they can all grow up to eat birds and poop solid gold. Yippee!”
Oh my, Steve. Wonderful rule-breaking. Here are a few of your own Mathysian words and my personal feelings about them:
tubthumbingness – I don’t know what tubs have to do with thumbs beside the fact they both begin with t (although one is soft and one is hard) and have a b (although one is hard and the other is soft), but I am amazed by this new word. Such cadence.
assumptioning – a verb! You went above and beyond the assignment, my friend, and I love it. I like this ten times better than assuming.
illusionation – is it the noun formed from your new verb “illusionate?” Or is it a new country founded on the pursuit… I mean the illusion… of happiness? I don’t know. But I do know I like this word.
cockleburss – Is this a combination of cockle (ie inner parts) and burrs (ie prickly thing that gets stuck in your sock when you go hiking)? Because I love it and need the definition so I can use it in my novel.
There are so many more. I love burd and burdlings and how you get real crazy with your soneyhuckle. Very impressive practice Mr. Mathys. Thank you for bringing your talents to the Write Practice.
I think a couple of those were typos! Tubthumbing was supposed to be “tubthumping”, which was a pop-rock song a few years ago – something about loud music and dancing. And a “cockleburr” is this: http://kaweahoaks.com/html/cockleburr.html I remember finding them all over my socks after hiking. The “ss” was again a typo – sorry to burst your bubble if you thought it was new, but feel free to use anything and everything. Just let me know when the novel is ready and I can buy a copy.
You should definitely have left me in the heavenly land of ignorance 🙂
I will absolutely let you know when the novel is done, but you might be waiting several years.
Here’s my writing practice. Mind, it’s not polished because I follow Natalie Goldman’s recommendations for writing practice from “Writing Down the Bones”, which say to “don’t stop, don’t think, don’t get logical” etc.
“I’m going to be writing, making up words. Not making them up like brambish or purtending, but adding expressives to nounds and making them adjectives – writerly, miserly (though that’s alreayd a word – or padlike. As in, the padlike width of my hand makes it difficult to hold a pen. I bet I can get a better adjective / noun for how hard it is to hold my pen – the mortarish joints of my fingers make it hard to grip hard. The bullet-smooth barrel makes it easy to lose the pen out of my fingers. The death-rattle-like whisper of my hand across the page reminds me that I am alone, but the burblely background noise of hte dishwasher confirms that my solitation is not complete. The tubthumbingness from upstairs just hones in on the absurdity of my assumptioning – as if I can bring forth such things nilly-willy without authority. And who shall make authority? Myself? Or God? Or my parents, and their stoney faced faces that present an aura of authority, an era of immodesty, a pantheonic symulacrum of thrown-together rules, that are purportably for my own good but have the distinguishing effect of turning my once-humble mind into a sycophantic rambled deep in the bowels of my head.
I don’t know what I’m doing here. I’m trying to practice writing by breaking rules. But if I follow his rule to break rules, then I haven’t broken any rules at all! Irnicality of it all; illogicalness is a beautfulness is a wondrousness is an illusionation is an illuminamagic show that boarded the standard six months ago and has yellow innings until the next stop, at which point we will quark and bramble our way past the Platypus (blessed be his image no name no beak – is it a beak? or a bill?) and into the Ionic, Doric, and Sycophantic, the three realms of ancient Grease, and Rhomium, and Lysistratas burning, ashes burning, threes fall down.
Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? Very well, thank you. And yours? Oh, mine is rather infested with cockleburss and cockles and burrs and birds that eat cockleburrs and burds that eat birds, though I’ve never seen a burd before, I only know they come out at night, have three paws on the left and three on the right, can make incredible leaps from one side of the pea plants to the other, and leave little gold farthings when they poop. So instead of catching, or capturing, or rapturing, or rupturing them I’ve taken to feeding them. It’s a rather profitable business you see – in one end goes little birds, attracted & kept silverly happy by the large plants of hneysuckle and soneyhuckle, and out the other end comes gold farthings.. Oh, not every time, mind ou only about once a week. But I am hopefuly that the one I’ve heard (the burd, everybody’s heard, about the burd, well the burd, the burd, the burd is the word) will find an attractive mate, settle down, and make me a big old batch of burdlings. So they can all grow up to eat birds and poop solid gold. Yippee!”
Oh my, Steve. Wonderful rule-breaking. Here are a few of your own Mathysian words and my personal feelings about them:
tubthumbingness – I don’t know what tubs have to do with thumbs beside the fact they both begin with t (although one is soft and one is hard) and have a b (although one is hard and the other is soft), but I am amazed by this new word. Such cadence.
assumptioning – a verb! You went above and beyond the assignment, my friend, and I love it. I like this ten times better than assuming.
illusionation – is it the noun formed from your new verb “illusionate?” Or is it a new country founded on the pursuit… I mean the illusion… of happiness? I don’t know. But I do know I like this word.
cockleburss – Is this a combination of cockle (ie inner parts) and burrs (ie prickly thing that gets stuck in your sock when you go hiking)? Because I love it and need the definition so I can use it in my novel.
There are so many more. I love burd and burdlings and how you get real crazy with your soneyhuckle. Very impressive practice Mr. Mathys. Thank you for bringing your talents to the Write Practice.
I think a couple of those were typos! Tubthumbing was supposed to be “tubthumping”, which was a pop-rock song a few years ago – something about loud music and dancing. And a “cockleburr” is this: http://kaweahoaks.com/html/cockleburr.html I remember finding them all over my socks after hiking. The “ss” was again a typo – sorry to burst your bubble if you thought it was new, but feel free to use anything and everything. Just let me know when the novel is ready and I can buy a copy.
You should definitely have left me in the heavenly land of ignorance 🙂
I will absolutely let you know when the novel is done, but you might be waiting several years.
I created a new word – Pokerism, for a poker aphorism – and need to know if I can get a copyright for it. The book I am writing is “That’s All, Folks! … 101 Pokerisms that Improve Your Game.”
I created a new word – Pokerism, for a poker aphorism – and need to know if I can get a copyright for it. The book I am writing is “That’s All, Folks! … 101 Pokerisms that Improve Your Game.”
Doesn’t making up words disrupt the flow to the story, though? And make the Author seem childish and silly?
Because while describing a scene, if we use such phrases or words, won’t that make the reader snap out of the trance, stop at that particular moment and shake his/ her head and lose interest in the story?
Like, for instance:
Shelly flicked a look towards Shaheen.
Impossible.
That girl had an incredible mind.
It was ridiculous, really.
As opposed to:
Shelly flicked a look towards Shaheen.
Impossible.
That girl had an iPhone-like mind.
It was ridiculous, really.
I apologize in advance if I offended you.
I tend to be crude, at times.
The Sun-moon casts its long shadow upon the citizens of Garcity every morning light.
Its weedesque people, toiling, hardworking under the garrish conditions. They would sweat, they would cry. They would break their skin and bleed as long as their Moony crops would prosper.
Her vinelike hands, each with it’s little bulbs growing green, lay softly on her stonesque bed. She opened her lobed-eye. The Sun-moon has risen.
“Wakey, wakey” a barky-man said from the door. “Time to rise and shadow, waking beauty.”
She covered her eyes, the glare of the Shadow hurt her eyes. “Too early in the mornlight, dweeb.”
“Dweeb?” he said. He moved inside and stood at the edge of her bed. He squinted at her viney form then. lightly kicked her shins. “Since when I was ‘Dweeb’?”
She closed her eyes and inhaled. He smelled of juicy barkness, dried leaves scent lingering around him. “Since this mornlight. Why are you here?” she said.
“Marriage,” he said.
She got bug-eyed and quickly stood up. “Marriage?” She looked around to and fro. There was no one around them and nothing behind him. “Me, getting married? I’m barely pass my 400th mornlight”
“Not really.,” he said as he grinned. “I just wanted to jerk you awake.”
She elongated her vine-like hands and gripped him around his neck. “Bad joke.” she said. “Bad joke dweeb.”
“I’m, I’m-” he said while turning grey. “Choking.”
“Tell me why you’re here,” she said as she loosened her grip. “Then I’ll consider letting your barky self go.”
He let out a sigh. “Okay.” he said. “It’s those countricil morons. You need to submit your monthly tally of moonies.”
She promptly let go. “This is due today? Oh shit, I hardly sort them.” She grabbed his hands and dragged him to her storage area. “Come Dweeb, I’m imploring you to help me.”
“Okay?” he said.