One Missed Letter - When "Friends" Becomes "Fiends"

One missed letter can change a word entirely.

Like when "r" is missing from the word "friends."

I was reading a recap article of a popular show and read the sentence, "Why has he been a guy who doesn't have a lot of fiends?" Those two words are the complete opposite! ... But we all know what the author meant (this time!).

"Devaluing Words"

In college, an English professor very passionately said she hates when people used the word "impact" to mean anything less than a physical collision, like a car crash. She didn't like it when people used it to mean "influence" or "effect." For instance, a person who says "Wow, that really impacted me" means that a thing said or done influenced, in a good way, the thinking of a person on a certain topic or helped them feel better about things.

My professor would probably describe this "misuse" of the word as devaluing the word and ultimately the English language.

I would disagree. In one way, I agree that it might cause less clarity—but often in language you take meaning from context. So if you do that, it's pretty clear what a person is saying.

The reason I disagree is "impact" used in that way (as "influence") is used in a metaphorical sense. The impact wasn't physical; it was mental or emotional. A person did or said something that really effected someone intellectually or emotionally. A bulldozer of a thought can really challenge a person's worldview; it can knock down part of the worldview's structure—taking down a piece out of it, this slightly unrealistic view of reality in someone's mind.

Christopher Johnson writes in Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little that much of everyday use of language has metaphors in it. When we talk about ideas, this often happens. "The thought hit me that ... " "Hit me" is a metaphor because a thought can't hit, but these words describe how it felt.

Also, Johnson says that metaphors like this are a good part of language. It brings mental color and pictures to thought in everyday conversations and writing.

I found this helpful in thinking through how to write well. Good writing includes those metaphors. Those everyday idioms. And yeah, of course—adding mental color and pictures sounds like art—so let's do it. Or do it more.

It's freeing—now I don't feel like my writing has to be so formal that I have to take it all out. Let language and metaphor live.

Book Review: A Cup of Comfort for Writers

I bought an "inspirational" book for writers for two dollars, put it away, eventually found it again, and then read the entire thing. Reading the entire book means it must be good. I don't often finish a book unless I really enjoy it or find all of it to be helpful or new information.

A Cup of Comfort for Writers is the book. The first two chapters/essays were hard to be motivated to read, but the essays following those struck me as helpful and even fun. Sure, every once and a while I ran into an essay that I didn't like as much, but I knew a following essay would be enjoyable. And I was right.

Being a type of person who loves words and writing feels like a unique thing--so, reading stories of people who are wired to love them was encouraging.

It feels good to see other people put words to your feelings, and show how this love for words plays out in different settings and lifestyles.

Another thing I think happened is that it made me a better writer. I've heard people say that to be a better writer, you should read a lot. Well, with this book, I was reading good writing. On top of that, it was my favorite type that I like to practice myself--nonfiction!

Every time I look for websites, magazines, and books on writing, most of it is on fiction writing. That seems to be the need. But I don't ever intend to write fiction. I see value in it but I also wish I could see more focus on nonfiction.

Having Something to Say

Guest Post by Danny Dowell, www.theologyponderings.blogspot.com

I enjoy writing as a hobby and am not qualified to speak on professional writing, but I have certain musings about trends I see in aspiring professional writers.

One tendency of aspiring writers is they seem to focus solely on the craft of writing. They have a fluid beautiful style of writing and then go to grad school to study the craft of writing.

There is a certain obsession with style that a lot of aspiring writers have. The reality is that most good writing needs content.

Even good fiction is based on content. The content is often a step back and hidden in the backgrounds.

All the really great works of literature are filled with ideas. We may or may not like these ideas but the provoke thought.

There may be social commentary, political commentary, commentary on how people relate to each other, or something that delves into the human psyche. But always the great works have content hidden within.

Sometimes these stories leave more questions than answers.  Content does not need to have a finality.  Content can provoke thought without giving the solution.

We remember stories because they teach us something or move us to feel something more so than because of the language these stories use.

Basically good writing needs to be based on good ideas. Maybe the aspiring writer should not study writing at all but study a broad array of subjects to write about?

Maybe studying writing will lead to a breakthrough for aspiring writers, but fluid style has a limited interest.

People want something which inspires or captivates the imagination. Most of these things are based on ideas.

There are some mass published works that sell wildly and have no content value at all. These works are the sort of thing you hope your friends would not read.

I hope the aspiring writer would hope to have something of value to say. Often having something of value to say is much harder than saying that something well.

A piece of writing can always be stylistically improved by a skilled editor. But a piece of writing devoid of content will always be devoid of content.

The writing style moves to further the content, but it is the content that makes the story worthwhile. Without content the story is just an array of beautifully arranged words which are of little value.

The Bus - Generating Writing Ideas

The public commuter bus is a place to think of ideas for writing. So many interesting people walk on and off the bus every day. All varieties of backgrounds and cultures can be noticed in the way people speak.

There are also other multiple benefits, that for now, during the summer and fall months before winter hits, seem to make riding the bus worth it:

• Walking (to bus stops)
• Being outside more. Plus, you get an excuse to just stand or sit there for a little while and enjoy the sound or the colors of passing cars. Normally that would seem strange if you're not under a bus sign.
• Diversity. I love different cultures and ethnicity! Each one has something beautiful a part of it, and helps to offer a way to reflect on your own.
• Reading. If my stop is long enough, I pull out a book. Which I tend not to do that often at home sometimes—so many other things to do there! But I know reading makes me happy.

I've been reading an introduction to one of Dostoevsky's books, and it talks about how he really enjoyed the same thing—meeting people that aren't really in literature or very rarely seen there, and then writing about them. Interesting characters who dare to be themselves, to show up in public, and drive a very huge rectangular vehicle and still seem so nice when a new person tries to put their ticket in upside down.

Art in Reality TV

Art has a way of making its way into all sorts of things. I used to think art was only paintings, artistic drawings, photography, and sculptures. But I'm starting to see that art is in more places than those activities.

I was watching a reality TV competition show (Master Chef) last night and started to think of the art behind video editing. Video editors look through so much video from multiple cameras, trying to find the right or exciting pieces and putting them next to certain statements or events that add to it in a beneficial way. Then they also choose music or noise to go quietly along with it to bring out certain emotion.

I remember a summer college roommate, when we were discussing who had TV rights that night and I really wanted to watch a reality TV show, tell me that reality TV shows are fake and therefore worthless to watch. It made me think. It seemed like a good argument at the time.

However, if reality TV shows—especially competition shows—are part art, then why should they be 100% real? Art is not "real." It is a reflection of or a statement about reality. So if the shows make me think about the reality of emotions and human psychology and just the beauty of certain things, then I think it's worth it. Plus, sometimes it's fun to guess who the producers would want to win, and it can be entertaining when you see what they are doing (trying to make something very ordinary seem scary).

Part of why I've been thinking about this is the new show Siberia and if it's worth watching.

Also, a long time ago, during my English capstone course in college, the professor asked what is the point of reading fiction stories when they aren't real. He didn't give us an answer, possibly waiting for us to find it ourselves.

A friend in college was also asking a similar question. I had a little trouble answering then, even though I always enjoyed it myself. Now I feel like part of the answer is: "It's art!" People love to look at and appreciate art.

Confession of a Proofreader

A moment ago I became paranoid that, when wanting to write about a punctuation mark, I'd end up using the word for a very sad medical problem! Is it "comma" or "coma"? It's funny how one letter difference can be a completely different thing. I had it right this time—"comma."

Recently I noticed someone in a forum unintentionally writing "defiantly" when he meant to write "definitely."

I mention this not because I care if people make spelling errors (well, except for at work when I am asked to find those), I just love to marvel at how language works, origins of words, and how that influences things. For instance, in Roy Peter Clark's book The Glamour of Grammar, he mentions how both words "glamour" and "grammar" derive from the same word.