How Etymology Can Change Your Life, And Other Matters Lexiconical

For years, those same years during which I couldn’t decide which I loved more—acting, writing, painting or sculpting, I tortured myself with one word: dilettante. Even my profile in the high school yearbook mentioned that “there must be at least three Louises,” one who painted, one who wrote, one who acted. Was I pleased by that suggestion? No, it confirmed that I was a dabbler, someone who skimmed the surface, who was a little good at a lot of things, A Jacqueline of all trades, mistress of none. In short, a dilettante.

Then one day, on an impulse for which I will be forever grateful, I looked up the word with which I’d been flagellating (a word which comes from the Latin for whip, but which is a cognate or close family member of the Old Norse word for fluttering wings) myself. Guess what the dictionary told me, dear readers? The root of the word (from the Italian by way of Latin) is a verb which means to delight. WHOA! What a revelation. Somewhere along the intersection of history and language, English speakers had separated art and knowledge from delight; and a dilettante had come to mean a person who wasn’t serious enough, who took mere joy from what they did or studied. Double WHOA! What’s wrong with taking delight? In lots of things? In anything you can wrap your hands or mind or heart around?

That is how, O Best Beloveds, the dictionary set me free. To be whoever I pleased. Among my many subsequent identities has been Etymologist, one who revels in the changing shape and meaning of words. (This specialty’s name comes, ultimately, from the Greek word eteos, meaning true or actual.) I’ve loved learning, for example, that almost all Indo-European words for write find their roots in verb forms that meant to push, scratch, carve, or cut. Little wonder, considering what hard work writing used to be before paper and computers. How rich and right, too, that the origin of the word human is probably a mashup of the Latin homo (man) and humus (earth)—not to be confused with beings of a higher order, you see.

If you’d like to dabble (which word originally meant to splash rather than immerse in water—can you really get clean that way? Tsk. Tsk.) in word origins, try this site, which introduces itself, aptly and juicily, thus: “This a map of the wheel-ruts of modern English.”

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php

So. What words have changed your life?

The Overheard Conversation

Writers love to eavesdrop. There’s no better grist for the mill than the conversation of strangers, not intended for your ears. On a craft level, eavesdropping is a wonderful exercise in learning to write authentic dialogue. The overheard do not explain what or whom they are talking about for the benefit of Nosey in the seat behind them, and yet Nosey gets the gist of it along with the frisson of stolen pleasure. That’s what you want from dialogue! The eavesdropper has to try to make sense of what’s being said and in so doing becomes a truly engaged listener. Aren’t those exactly the kind of readers we crave?
Eavesdropping, after all, is what literature is all about. The reader is the proverbial fly on the wall, vicariously delighted or horrified at what is taking place. And so it’s not surprising that the overheard conversation is a mainstay of literature, especially for young readers. How many dastardly plans have been heard through keyholes, in the pages of a book? It’s a popular conceit that can easily backfire and strain the reader’s suspension of critical doubt. There’s the gratuitous just-happened-by nature of it all. Unless of course it’s the coincidence that starts the book. (The only coincidence we can ever really get away with).
The young protagonist who is actively attempting to overhear something he’s not meant to hear is more believable but you have to be careful that what he hears really sounds like conversation and not simply a convenient platter of plot point. The worst example of this is the conversation ostensibly already in progress that still manages, somehow, to provide all the pertinent information the character needed to hear.
When we write from a limited viewpoint, either in first or second person, there is much that must happen off-stage. For that matter, even in a novel of Dickensian omniscience, not every scene that happens can be recorded. That would have to be renamed the excruciatingly boring omniscient point of view.

But here’s something to think about. I’ve just written a scene that will definitely not be in my new middle grade novel. Moth has just confessed something dreadful to his mother in the hope that she will come clean about her own big secret. He goes off to his room, disgruntled, fuming. Dad comes home and mom knows she has to tell him what just transpired and, in so doing, has to reveal to her husband at least some of her guilty secret. I understood this scene would have to happen the moment I’d finished the scene between Moth and his mother. But even if it occurred to Moth to try to overhear what his parents might need to talk about, there would be no way on earth mom would let that happen.
The thing is, this author had to know what went down between mom and dad; just how much mom would confess; how angry or understanding dad would be; how unsettled they both would be, when next Moth saw them. I gave Dad a beer and wrote the scene like dialogue in a play, since it would never appear in print.
Little did I know that in overhearing that mom-dad scene the whole story would shift, inescapably, in a way that I had not foreseen. I had no idea what Dad was up to. Neither had mom!

Writing, Encouragement, and “Poetry”

When I do my “What’s in Your Suitcase?” school presentation in high schools, I talk about unpacking your personal suitcase so negative events and energy from your past don’t follow you around and screw up your everyday life. I talk about how most of us are lugging along bags that we’ve never even looked at.

I then talk about repacking the suitcase and what frame of mind one must be in to repack a suitcase that one has unpacked. One of my favorite parts about the repacking spiel is: Knowing your strengths and weaknesses.

I get a good few laughs when I talk about this. I tell the audience about how I’ve met students in classrooms whose life plan is to be in the NBA…but they don’t play on the school’s basketball team. I tell them to think back to American Idol contestants who couldn’t sing one note but based their life’s dreams on making it onto the show. I say, “You have to know what you’re actually good at. You don’t want to seem delusional, do you?”

I tell them to look at me. I say, “I cannot be a ballet dancer. I am a big-boned woman, five foot ten with size eleven feet. I probably couldn’t have been an Olympic gymnast either. I don’t think they make leotards in my size.” I tell them that I was a good basketball player, but not even close to WNBA…though WNBA didn’t exist when I was in high school. Maybe had the WNBA existed for me as a child, I would have felt a deeper reason to play better basketball. Would I have worked harder knowing that an opportunity could come out of that particular talent? Maybe. I’ll never know. Look for opportunity, I tell students. Real opportunity.

In schools, I meet a lot of to-be rappers. Most of them will not rap for me. I tell the audience that’s okay, not everyone can show their strengths on the spot like that.

But then I tell them about the time I met a student who said he was going to be a famous rapper and actually rapped.

I said, “Get out. You can rap?”
He said, “You care about rap?”
I said, “First concert I went to by myself was Public Enemy. 1987.”
He said, “Conscious rap. That’s what I’m gonna do.”
I said, “Show me.”

He looked around, nervous. It was a small class. He was on the spot and there was no way he was going to rap for me.

I said, “So you want to be a famous rapper?”
He said, “Yeah.”
I said, “But you can’t rap for me?”
He said, “Nah.”

I wasn’t going to push him. I know the feeling of being uncomfortable and feeling like my dreams are stupid. Boy do I know that feeling.

A girl in the class said, “How about a battle?”
He shook his head.
She said, “Come on. You’re good. I’ll do it if you do it.”

Inside of a minute, there was a rap battle. She started. He responded. They went two or three rounds and were amazing. I got a video of it on my phone.

Why was this student able to rap for me? In the end, it was encouragement. It took one person from his class to say, “Come on. Do it. You’re good at it.” Encouragement is a big deal. Not just for kids or teenagers. Encouragement is something everyone needs all through life. Encouragement is just a damn nice thing to do for another person.

—

I’m a published poet. I started publishing in poetry. I’ve known a lot of great poets. I know super-famous poets. I know poets you’ve never heard of but their poetry is just as fantastic. As a writer, I’ve known good poems and bad poems, just like any writer. We can’t be perfect all the time. I’ve known better poets than me and I’ve known better poets than you. And that’s okay as long as poetry is being written.

At some point in the last few years, I met a person who used air quotes on me in regard to my poetry. She said that my “poetry” was _________. You fill in the blank. I can’t remember what she said because I was too perplexed by the air quotes.

Um.

“Poetry” is very different to Poetry.
Air quotes are not very encouraging.

I didn’t write a poem for a year or so. I’m not sure why. Maybe for the same reason as those future rappers I meet who just can’t throw down a rap for me while I’m in the class—too embarrassed, been teased by their classmates, been made to feel like they were “rappers” and not just working on rap the way every “real” rapper works on rap in a day.

I was lacking encouragement.
Or worse, fighting discouragement.

I think it’s good to remember that no matter how long we’ve been in a thing, no matter how hard we’ve worked, no matter how many things we sell or know or how many things we write, there is a person who can out-write us. Our job is to encourage that writer. Our job is to remember that as a community of writers, we are all in this together. We are laying down the times we live inside of words that will, all going well, outlive us.

Last night I found the first poem I wrote since I was air-quoted. I’m going to paste it at the end of this blog. It’s not 100% done. I don’t care. The teenagers who rap battled for me did so with raps off the tops of their heads—not revised, not practiced. That’s guts. Not “guts,” but guts.

Maybe you, reading this, don’t like rap.
But was this post about rap?

I have spent my life empowering and encouraging people to find their guts. This takes a balance of tough love and soft love. It takes being able to see that everything anyone creates is real, even if I don’t like it. I am not the sun. I do not get to decide what’s real and what isn’t. Luckily I was grown with my feet planted in dirt. I don’t plan on leaving any time soon.

I can’t wait to see my next high school rap battle. I can’t wait to see one of my high school student writers sell a novel. I hope it’s better than anything I ever wrote. I hope they keep their feet in the dirt, too. I hope more than anything that they never get so near the sun that they choose to burn a fellow writer rather than encourage them.

Fellow writers, hear me: Come on. Do it. You’re good at it.

Ground Naked (Unfinished)
by A.S. King

The beast took my friend.
Ate him up
from the center of his brain.
The beast took my friend
because the beast
was hungry.

Lurks everywhere, this
ugly thing with teeth
dull teeth so they hurt
gnaw slowly. The beast
grinds and expels and
grinds and expels.
My friend was ground.
My friend was expelled.

The world pretends.
The world pretends
we’re imagining things.
It’s happier with naked
celebrity photos or war.

My friend was naked in war.
My friend was ground naked by war.
My friend was expelled naked
by war but the police report
gives no account of
the real killer.

My beast.
My gorgeous beast.
Gets no attention.
Every time they say
he took his
own life
the beast grows hungrier.

—

Amy

On Spending Money I Don’t Have.

What the cat is reading

Right now, I am waiting to hear from an editor about a manuscript I have already revised at least four times. The editor I am waiting to hear from isn’t even the editor who bought my book.   That editor has gone off to start her own imprint and I am starting over with someone I don’t know. To say that the waiting makes me anxious isn’t exactly true. My unease comes more from the sense that whatever I thought I knew is about to change.

I find myself cleaning the floors a lot, swearing in the car in traffic (easy to do in DC), and reading more than usual. What I need, whenever life is scary, sad, annoying, or full of waiting, is to read. This fall, I have been on a tear, spending money I don’t have on hardcovers, new paperback editions of old favorites, and short story collections. A few years ago, one of my students said that I should have a better grasp of contemporary children’s literature. I guess she hadn’t like my suggested diet of George MacDonald, P.L. Travers, E.B. White, and Hodgson Burnett. I thought at the time how lucky it was that I hadn’t sent her in the direction of Henry James (I am not a huge fan of his, but Turn of the Screw is the best ghost story ever). Now I wish I had converted that student to my belief that reading beyond what you know is the only legal activity which can transform how you think.

We all became writers for different reasons, in that we all fell in love with different books. Edith Wharton’s Age of Innocence may not be why you signed up for this life, but even if you couldn’t pay me to revisit Ann Rice or Stephanie Meyers, if they are why you are here, it’s what I most want to know about you. Just today, or sometime this week, read something that’s not for school or work. Read because you want to be the person who changes what you know. You don’t want it to be your editor. Or your floors or your colorful language. Read as if your life and your bank account depend on it.

My most recent bounty