WriMo Ireland

The University of Liverpool Creative Writing Society for Lifelong Learning – the 2nd Annual Ted Walters International Short Story and Poetry Competition. Deadline 31st May 2008.
They don’t seem to have their own website (I got the full details in a Studio-NI email), but the Write Out Loud blog has them here.

Also, the deadline for the Creative Writers Network’s Brian Moore awards is now Jan 31st (thankfully as I still don’t have my entry sent in…)

Saturday, 9th February – Write! Down’s second Wild Geese festival in Strangford (Co. Down); includes free writing workshops with renowned writers Ted Deppe, Kate Newmann and Damian Smyth, readings with featured and local writers; and an evening event of poetry and music at the church in Old Court, Strangford.

Comment if there’s anything you want added to this (short) list.

With all the articles about the English language that have been in the last days, I felt I had to post you this link to a Yahoo! Answers discussion thread about English words that no other word rhyme with.

Even though I don’t write much poetry (in french like in english), it’s good to know.

All the talk about words lately has got me thinking. I’m a big fan of ‘words’ in general – I love to read about the English language and the ways in which it has evolved. I also just like to collect unusual words and attempt to use them where possible. So I thought I would share some of my favourite books on the subject and ask you all for some recommendations on where I could go next!

‘The Deeper Meaning of Liff’ – Douglas Adams
Not a particularly serious book but I love the creativity involved in this and it always gives me a laugh no matter what page I happen to open up.

‘Larpers & Shroomers: The Language Report’ – Susie Dent
I suspect this one is a little out of date now (2004) but it’s still one of my favourites – I must check and see if there is a newer edition available. It looks at many different words from all varieties of English – from the US, to New Zealand and South Africa – and explores a lot of modern words that have arisen from the Internet.

‘Accomodating Brocolli in the Cemetary: Or why can’t anybody spell?’ – Vivian Cook
This covers spelling more than words, another pet interest of mine, and is not necessarily what you’d expect – very balanced view of differences in spelling. A little dry at times if you’re not that interested in the subject and don’t want to read lists of words – contains tests to keep you interested.

‘Foyle’s Philavery’ – Collected by Christopher Foyle
A dictionary of unusual words – some are well-known and just chosen for their beauty, others I have never heard of before. Not all the way through this one yet but have learned some great words so far.

So if anybody has any recommendations for me, fire ahead! As far as I’m concerned, this subject never grows old.

I promised Laryskun I’d post these – we talked about them when we met earlier today, so at least we talked about writing even if we didn’t get any done!

This list came from one of the NaNoWriMo sessions at the Seamus Heaney Centre (Queen’s University), from Ian Sansom (who was leading the sessions).  They are all things to consider when editing your novel – I think they’re valid when you’re writing it in the first place, too!

1. Vocabulary – are you using appropriate words for your audience, your genre, your characters?
2. Organisation – the arrangement of your bits of story
3. Flow – does your story and its parts (e.g. dialogue) flow well when you read it back?
4. Transistions – more of the above, I think; how well the connections between ideas work
5. Structure – the elements of the story; its beginning, middle and end
6. Audience – what knowledge do your audience have of the story’s setting and characters; what knowledge do they need to have for it to make sense?
7. Tone – the manner and spirit in which your story is written, e.g. lighthearted, serious, sombre
8. Style – the cadence of the story (I can’t remember exactly what he meant by this – anyone? I suspect it was to do with things like whether it’s in first or third person, etc, unless that fits under tone…)
9. Clarity - are your ideas expressed clearly?
10. Accuracy – how well does your story match reality? (not something us fantasy authors need to take into quite as much consideration…)

I remember being interested to see how closely this list matched the things I consider when writing a technical document as part of my work, such as a software user guide…

I got a pamphlet for Listowel Writers Week in the post this morning. I went to this last year and I have to say it was one of the best things I did. There are a number of workshops on with different writers from Popular Fiction (Denise Deegan) to Song Writing (Glen Hansard from The Frames / Commitments / Once).

Apart from the workshops (and it’s well worthwhile doing one) just the buzz around Listowel is amazing and the chance to meet so many other writers.

I’d love to go this year but will be abroad, so I’ll just have to recommend it to you. You can get more information at http://www.writersweek.ie/

Following up on my post about misused, overused and useless words the other day, I spotted an article on the BBC just now about the American Dialect Society’s Word of the Year list (for 2007, obviously) – they chart words and phrases that become dominant in a particular year.

The word for 2007 is subprime, as related to below-par mortgages (and all the trouble in the US economy at the moment over mortgages). I’m not sure if it would be a word used much here though?

Words/phrases from the Word of the Year list that I particularly liked were:
- wrap rage (anger induced by the inability to open supermarket packaging - something my partner suffers from)
- Googleganger (someone other than you who’s listed when you Google your own name)

Ironically, waterboarding (a nasty form of ‘interrogation’, i.e. torture) made it onto both the misused etc list and onto the Word of the Year list. Guess it’s been something we’ve heard a lot about in the news, hmm?