E -- Evolution and Etymology

I believe in evolution. Now, I'm not going to argue about being descended from apes, but we do not

live in stasis. We and all of the things around us are in a constant state of change. That is a good thing. Otherwise we might still be wearing togas and speaking Hebrew.  We wouldn't have such delights in life as corn on the cob and seedless watermelon. We would still be cooking over open fires. Not only that, we would still be walking because no one would have thought to hop on a horse.

The English language is forever evolving. If it didn't we would be speaking in thees and thous, and wishing a pox upon one another when vexed. We would be going hither and anon. We would wander in the gloaming.

Words, like clothing, go in and out of style. Back in the early 20th century things went from being "bully" to being the bees knees or the cat's pajamas. By the 60s things were groovy and in the 80s they were totally tubular.

The changes in English are not limited to slang. When I was a child there were no cell phones, compact discs, or microwave ovens. We didn't have couch potatoes or parking vultures. Okay, we HAD them but we didn't call them that.

As the world has become more mobile our language has been regularly incorporating words and phrases from other languages to enhance our own. English is especially known for this. Did you know that the Spanish word for fiesta is fiesta? Okay, bad joke, but that is an example of a Spanish word that is now in regular use in English. Crayon comes from French. Much of our language is derived from German and Latin. The evidence is ubiquitous (Latin).

Just as we create new words, we also drop others. What are bees knees anyway? Lots of slang drops away just about as quickly as it came. Then there are those that were in common use at one time and have just died out, such as "snoutfair" (handsome) or "jirble" (to pour with an unsteady hand). For more of these words, click here.

For writers this evolution provides a vast additional language resource. Archaic language allows us to add a touch of authenticity to period pieces, or extrapolate these words and phrases into some fantasy world or future eon.

English is perhaps the richest language on the planet being over-burdened with different words that mean the same thing or shift with subtle meaning. We craft both poetry and prose by selecting the words that sound just right for the situation and how they work together, whether sibilant sounds or crackling cacophony.

This is also why English is reputed to be the most difficult language to learn. So as writers we seek to become masters of the words past, present, and future, and often in more than one language.

Happy wordsmithing!

D - The Dieting Dilemma

I have been on  a diet, more or less, for my entire life. If you look at my photo you can tell that my efforts have net been terribly successful. I have been through the pantheon of eating disorders including anorexia and bulimia. I have even had lapband surgery, which has been the most successful, but thanks to my messed-up thyroid it still hasn't been the fix I had been hoping for.

As the struggle continues some surprising things have been happening. I have been giving in to some of my food cravings and miracles are occurring.

Now I have had people scoff at my food craving theories. A woman I once worked with told me that food cravings were just something people use as an excuse to eat chocolate cake. I then posed to her that I would get cravings for broccoli and asked her to explain that in her context. Of course, she couldn't. This woman went on to get heavily into macrobiotics.

I eventually expanded my theory into the food cravings and being overweight and having chronic disease all being linked to poor nutrition. If your body does not get the nutrition it needs, it signals you to continue eating in search of that nutrition. Most people are not recognizing the root of the craving to get to what they need.

My case in point: Last year was an exceedingly stressful year for me with my mother being hospitalized twice and then passing away. As the only child, everything fell to me to take care of. In the middle of all this, contrary to conventional knowledge, my blood sugar levels dropped mysteriously at a time when they would have ordinarily been on the rise and out of control.

I had to stop and look at what had been happening with my diet. Late spring and early summer found me picking and eating fresh strawberries and raspberries in my garden, often without leaving the garden. I had already discovered the link between red berries and lower blood sugar and decreased inflammation. Check. Okay, what else?

Because of the stress I had been allowing myself to indulge in certain of my favorite foods and not in one of those limited ways given over to portion control. They were also foods that I had been warned for many years to shun as eating them only sometimes. I had been indulging in avocados and pistachios day after day.

For awhile I had felt a bit sick, with a mildly upset stomach and diarrhea, and a bout of peeing like my diabetes was completely out of control (which it wasn't). I realized that this period was probably a bit of my body detoxing.

I was able to stop using one kind of insulin and reduce the use of the other by more than half. I could occasionally indulge in foods I had previously had a great deal of trouble with -- like potatoes.

Once my body was cleared I only needed a small amount of avocado and pistachios daily to keep the effect going. While they both tend to be a bit on the expensive side for my budget, they are cheap compared to the cost of insulin.

Ever the researcher, I have repeated this twice with the same results. I am not suggesting that every diabetic do this. Each person needs to find what works for them. But my cravings helped me find my way.

I also eat a lot of raw cabbage, cauliflower, and radishes to help control my hyperthyroid. They have something in them called goitrogens that lower thyroid function when eaten in quantity. Cooking these veggies even a little destroys them. So if your thyroid is low you don't need to run from them. Just cook them or eat them in moderation.

It's time we learned to eat our medicine.

C - Cat Scans and Lab Reports

I love puns and jokes and anything funny, weird, or strange. So it should come as no surprise that I write humor - a lot. If I can make you laugh then my day is complete.

I didn't originally know that I could be funny. Then I wrote a Christmas letter in which I included the
tale of my being charged by an eight-point buck while raking leaves that fall. Then people started telling me that it was the best and funniest Christmas letter that they had ever received.

That set me on a mission to figure out if I could write funny intentionally. It turns out I can, but I do need to get into that portion of my brain where I'm just a little bit twisted. Or maybe a lot. It's hard to tell sometimes. It is the area of the brain where I make honest observations and let them out unedited.

My first attempt was a poem about having a bad hair day and wanting to shave my head to deal with it. It won first place in a light verse contest.

From there I chose to pitch a humor column to the newspaper I was working for at the time. They accepted and I found myself pulling the humor from life and putting it on paper regularly. I found that being self-effacing was very effective at getting people to laugh. So I wrote a great deal of my ineptitude and follies in life -- such as my almost nonexistent athletic ability and my insistence on trying to do things that scare me.

One of my favorite columns was for Women's History Month. For that one I reviewed the women I am descended from and told a few tales of them. For example, the time my grandmother accidentally fed my mother's boyfriend cat food. Or the time that my mother accidentally shut the cat in the dryer and switched it on. It took her a moment to figure out what that thumping noise was. I, of course, have kept up this womanly tradition in many ways, from finding a snake in my bathtub one evening, to my cat throwing a dead mouse in my face.

Cats do seem to keep cropping up, and they will continue to do so for I am a cat person. Not one of those little old ladies with 45 cats -- I just have the one.  And she is worth 45 all in her furry little self.

But that is another post.

B - Blowing It Already

I must admit that I am not infallible. I signed up for the blogging challenge with every intention of sitting down diligently each day to blog. Naturally I blew it. I am doing it but I started it three days late. Oh well.

Still, there is time for me to catch up and do well. After all, I have always been a late bloomer.

Unlike those people who just go through school, graduate, and embark on their desired career path, I had to take that path that is supposed to be less-traveled. It really isn't all that untraveled. Lots of us are out there still trying to live the dream at a time in life when others are looking back on a career well-spent and perhaps even planning to retire early.

I didn't get my first professional writing gig until I was in my late 30s even though I had been dreaming of being a writer since I was seven. That wasn't a job that made me a career writer though. As any writer can tell you, writing jobs are scarce and writers are a penny a gross.

So the road continues and I am still taking it. Never give up. Never give in.

A - Accepting the Challenge

When I was young I never believed that I was competitive at all. I hated sports. Mostly because I was

(and still am) terrible at them. It wasn't until I was an adult that I found out that I am actually very competitive -- once you get me on my own turf.

One year my mother insisted that I enter a poem in a contest sponsored by the Poetry Society of Colorado. I entered and won first place. That started me on entering their contests regularly. I ended up challenging myself to enter every contest every year. I won regularly. And I found my competitive chops.

I found that my favorite competitor was accepting challenges against myself. Proving to myself over and over that I could do it. For someone who grew up with nearly zero self-esteem. It has been tremendously empowering personally.

So here I go again -- challenging myself to write a blog post six days a week for the month of April as part of the A-Z blogging challenge. http://stevenchapmanwriter.com/?p=1328

The Magic of Words

Words are amazing things. Though intangible they have substance and texture. They can flow, gush, and trickle like water. They have the power to give and take life. They come in different flavors from English to Urdu. They require chemistry to be used properly. They can take you down the rabbit hole and back again. And we, the writers, we are the wizards who create the magic.

We range in ability from a neophyte Ron Weasley to a seasoned Dumbledore. Life is our Hogwarts and we study relentlessly. We sort ourselves into different genres instead of houses. Our magic wands have keyboards and hard drives.

Words are our natural obsession. Most of you know what I am talking about. We place them, rearrange them, and fiddle with them, looking for an impossible level of perfection. We know that perfect combination is out there because every now and then we manage to herd a few of them together in just the right combination to dazzle even our own inner critic.

Sometimes the obsession gets the better of us and some of those magic words start circling in our heads the same way that annoying song gets stuck in your head. I once spent an entire day stuck on the word "shoe." It seemed to be such an on word on that day. I couldn't get over the sound of the word and how strange it seemed. I know that there is an evolution to the word that came to represent our most common form of footwear. I know that as English speakers we have tacitly agreed that this is what the word refers to for all of us. It was just at that particular time the word struck me as odd.

Then there are the words that just feel good tripping off the tongue. For me it tends to be certain scientific and medical terms. My two favorite are caulerpa taxifolia (a form of seaweed), and necrotizing fasciitis (a flesh-eating disease). There is a certain poetry to these words in their rhythm and flow. They can get stuck in my head worse than the two weeks I couldn't get "What Do You Do with a Drunken Sailor" out of my head.

I have a friend who loves to read and so she reads really fast so that she can get through each book as quickly as possible. She calls me a slow reader. I remind her that I'm not a slow reader, but someone who has chosen to take the time when reading to savor the words like a fine wine. I observe the way the writer puts the words together, how they fit, and whether or not I would have written it differently. I take the time to be amazed at someone else's skill with the magic.

The strangest question in the world is "What's the magic word?" It is not "please." It is not "abracadabra."  It is a strange question because the only right answer is "All of them!"

The Writing Life: The Dangers of Exercise

Okay, yesterday was the first day of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and tens of thousands of people worldwide are participating in the annual challenge to write a 50,000 word novel by the end of the month. I am one of those who join the insanity. It is an intense, fun, frustrating, and ultimately fulfilling things you can do as a writer -- especially if you are just starting out. Between the NaNoWriMo website and the Facebook pages that support it, the writer has a huge pool of support. The writers chat, challenge one another, and help out when one is stumped with a problem. It opens the channels of creativity. Sometimes with startling results.

This afternoon I took a break for a nap and exercise. The nap was solid and I awoke refreshed and ready to exercise. As my blood flow began to increase, so did my brain activity. Naturally, my thoughts turned to thoughts of my book and how it was taking on a whole different patina than it had in my notes. Not out of character for me, but actually falling into a more familiar, more appropriate one -- one that guarantees that it will be a unique, one-of-a-kind novel.

From there my brain went a bit crazy and before I was finished with my exercises, I had seven additional solid book ideas. And every single one of them funnier than the last. Several of them were inspired by my newborn great niece, Bethany. I had to race to the computer and write them all down.

I can't wait to see what I am going to do with The Extra Large Medium.

Last week the exercise had released a crazy wonderful idea for the description of one of my main character's ex-boyfriends. 

No telling what tomorrow's exercise will bring, it is this way that danger lies. I could end up deluged with more ideas than I can handle, but I'm ready -- I think. I hope. When it comes to ideas -- I'm taking all comers. It must be something in the physical activity that really gets the gray matter mattering!

Perhaps I will be able to exercise my way to fame and fortune.