Finding the stillcenter

One month from today, I will be arriving here:

photo by schurch, morguefile.com

As you might guess, planning is making life a bit hectic. It's my fourth trip to the UK, but instead of being in a college program, on a bus tour, or having a romantic getaway with my hubby, I'll be taking a family trip. It's my 10-year-old daughter's first  time off the continent of North America, and we'll be renting a car and driving. On the left side of the road. Yeah. A many of new adventures lie ahead.

My day job tends to get very hectic in late May, when all the college professors get busy with summer writing projects and submissions to scholarly journals like the one I work on.

Promoting my novel and poetry collection continues to take my time in dribs and drabs.

And then there's the new novel, crying for my attention.

It's so easy on days like this to scurry from thing to thing and feel like I never fully engaged with anything.

That, friends, is "attention splatter," a helpful concept in the social media-soaked world. This article by Christine Kane explains it well.

She recommends having fewer priorities a day. Awesome. I'd love that. However, I can't control my agenda to that degree. I can, however, build pockets of focus into my day.

How? Set aside "sprint hours" and "concentration hours." In other words, give yourself pockets of quiet to do focused work, then at set intervals, deal with the small tasks that tend to interrupt: check and respond to e-mail, make a call or two, pop onto Facebook or Twitter.

Then stop.

Breathe.

Get up and walk a little. Drink a glass of water. Say a prayer or hail the muse.

Sit. Sink into your stillcenter.

Dig in to your next concentrated task with your full attention.

Do you have certain times of year that bring more "attention splatter"? How do you cope?

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See, place or quote? Using sight, site and cite

In my continuing series Homophone Helps, we'll be looking at three sound-alikes I've frequently seen confused both online and in some self-published books. Getting a handle on which word belongs in which context is so important because, for the most part, your computer's spell check won't catch this sort of error.

Sight

Photo credit: blackbird for morguefile.com

(n.) the power or ability to see; perception; something that is seen; a device that helps the eye aim at or find the direction of an object; aspiration.

(v., trans.) to catch a glimpse of; to aim using a sight; to test the straightness of

(v., intrans) to aim; to look carefully in one direction

Examples
That was a sight for sore eyes!

Jose lost his sight in the accident; now he's learning Braille.

Cullen caught his prey in the rifle sight.

She set her sights on winning the scholarship.

He sighted Melody coming across the field toward him.

That sharpshooter can sight targets a hundred yards away.

Mnemonic
Glasses and goggles protect your sight.

Site

(n.) the location of an actual or planned structure; the scene, point or place of an event or occurrence

photo credit: morguefile.com

(v., trans) to place in position or at a location

Examples
The new building site has marvelous views of the river.

Dr. Hendrix pinpointed the site of the tumor.

Mack sited the fountain a few feet from the path.

Mnemonic
He has a bump on the site where the mite did bite.

Cite

Photo: johninportland; morguefile.com

(v., trans.) to quote as an authority, example or proof; to refer to; to bring to another's attention; to call upon officially or authoritatively to appear

The noun form is citation.

Examples
Gladys frequently cited her yogi's words of wisdom.

If you're going to quote Faulkner in your essay, be sure to correctly cite the source and pages.

Lia was cited for failing to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk.

Mnemonic
Carefully cross-reference what you cite in this composition.


Here's a tough one for you: Do you go to see the sights? or the sites?

Context is everything! If you mean "stuff to be seen," like vistas or exciting venues, it's sights.
If you mean locations for a specific purpose, like where buildings will go up or film will be shot, it's sites.

Which of these trip you up? Any other homophones you'd like me to tackle?

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Stolen from poets: "Make it new"

"Make it new" declared Ezra Pound (1885-1972), a statement that became a rallying cry to the generation of early 20th century writers  we now call the Modernists. Nearly 100 years later, we still love a few of their favorite poetics tools to make writing fresh and zingy: neologism and portmanteau.

Don't be alarmed by the highfalutin' names. These two techniques are about breaking the rules. When you can't find the perfect word, you make one up. What could be more fun than that?

Neologism, from the Greek roots neo/new and logos/word, means an invented word. Lewis Carroll popularized the practice with his poem "Jabberwocky" in which he coined a number of terms, from galumphing to slithy. James Joyce's Finnegans Wake contains hundreds, including nebuless,  goddinpotty,bisaacles.

Neologisms can be especially helpful for conveying the thoughts of someone a bit different from the average thinker. In Daniel Keyes's Flowers for Algernon, Charlie's intelligence level is shown to be lacking through his use of not-quite-right terms including rilax, compushishens, telld. It's considerably more effective than simply telling us through a third-person narrator that Charlie has mental retardation.

I'm a fan of using neologisms for sound effect purposes--onomatopoeic neologism, for those of you who like fancy terminology. In my novel Never Gone, footsteps across icy snow "sloosh nearer." Later in the scene, simple, unadorned sound heightens the spookiness of the moment: "Chush. Chush. Chush."  

photo by mzacha, morguefile.com

Portmanteau, or pieced-together words, gets its name from a piece of luggage with two sides that's hinged in the middle. Lewis Carroll was the coiner of this use of the word.

Shakespeare was the king of portmanteau, inventing new words such as madcap and lackluster. Loads of writers since then have been coining these "siamixed" kinds of words (to steal from Joyce): Sylvia Plath gave us "a Meinkampf look" (making an adjective of Hitler's book Mein Kampf); George Orwell gave us "newspeak."

Portmanteau is probably the very best tool for naming some future technology so that it will still be understandable to contemporary readers. In Dune, Frank Herbert called his flying machines "ornithopters," combining the Greek words for bird and wing, giving readers a picture of  how the machines might look in flight.

Our culture has really run with this poetic tool, coining new terms at an unprecedented rate. We are all quick to take up terms like "Frankenfood," "netiquitte," "frappuccino" because they are readily understood and define well the qualities of some new phenomenon.

Portmanteau can also be wonderfully playful, a great way to pump up character voice. You get a very strong sense of someone who finds the new guy "adorkable" or who becomes "aggrannoyed" about the long line at the supermarket.

Your turn:
How might you incorporate some coined terms to jazz up your writing?

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Verse averse? Why you should try poetry

I'm over at Tyrean Martinson's blog today, explaining why fiction writers should include poetry reading in their craft-building self-education, in a post titled "Why read poetry?".

Poets have plenty to teach you about how to use words powerfully, how to employ sound and rhythm to undergird the action and emotion in your work, and how to conquer wordiness. You might be surprised to know that even genre-based magazines--romance, fantasty, SciFi, horror--often publish poems. So if form scares you off, perhaps content will make the prospect a bit more enticing.

I hope to speak more specifically about some of these things in an ongoing series "Stolen from Poets." My first post, on using vowel power to ramp up emotion, is HERE.

Are you verse averse? How might you overcome it?

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Gilbert

My friend Gilbert
had the kind of face
you see on milk cartons
on rainy Thursday mornings
that puddle in your brain
without a grain of sense
or purpose but dripdrip drip.

Gil played games
that brought down bullies
to no-longer-larger-than-life lugs
we could look in the eye
and not cringe.

Gil’s games
made emperors of roaches
and elf queens of
bucktoothed, freckled girls
who are good at math
and can’t sing.

Gil’s thoughts
entered me like garlic
and permeated blood
and lungs and skin,
reeking and lusty of life,
lingering in the pores
for days.

© 2013 Laurel W. Garver. From Muddy-Fingered Midnights: poems from the bright days and dark nights of the soul, page 8.

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Samples

Sunday school never prepared her for this kind of life after death.

"gorgeous, haunting...an impressive debut." --Leigh T. Moore, author of The Truth About Faking

"a twisty journey through a young girl's battle with death, grief, and the discovery of family secrets that threaten to undo her world." --Heidi Willis, author of Some Kind of Normal

Read the first chapter of Never Gone

MORE INFO on Never Gone






Explore the spaces where we create, wound, heal and find love, beauty, and grace. 

"Filled with heart. It breathes with the pain and joy of human experience...tender and hard hitting at once." --Angela Felsted, author of Scarred and Cleave

"Beautiful and inspirational." --Tyrean Martinson, author of Champion in the Darkness

Read the poem "Gilbert" from Muddy-Fingered Midnights

MORE INFO on Muddy-Fingered Midnights

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Short works

Short Fiction

"New Hues"
flash fiction excerpt from Never Gone
Vine Leaves Literary Journal, issue 1 (Jan. 2012)

anthologized in Best of Vine Leaves Literary Journal 2012
Available NOW from eMergent Press

"Tribute"
flash fiction
Motley Press (UK), issue 3 (2010)

"Swan Moment"
flash fiction
Maternal Spark, September 2009

Non-fiction

"Five Essentials to Succeed in Self-Publishing"
essay
Indiestructible: Inspiring Stories from the Publishing Jungle
Vine Leaves Press, 2013

Wedding Singer
nonfiction humor
Flashquake 9.2 (Winter 2009-10)


Poetry

"North and South"
Every Day Poets, 11 February 2013

"The Camera Came"
"Grace"
Ancient Paths, issue 17, available HERE

"Embouchure"
"Anemia"
"Pidge"
"Messaging"
"Storm Shelter"
Poetry Pact, volume 1

"Storm Shelter"
Daily Love, 23 December 2011

"The Lost Coin"
Drown in my Own Fears, issue 16 (2011)

"A Writer's Parable"
Rubber Lemon: short Christian writing (UK), issue 4 (Aug. 2011)

"Moving on"
"Graham at St. Stephen's"
My Poetry and Prose Place poetry contest, 2010

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