Category: Language (Page 5 of 9)

Gathering Book Ideas From Song Lyrics

December 5, 2010 / Katie L. Carroll

I may be stating the obvious here, since all my blog titles are song lyrics, but music is important to my writing. Sometimes it’s just a lyric or two that inspires me, but other times a whole song speaks to a scene on which I’m working or a character I’m developing.

In my story Elixir Bound, there’s a scene where the main character, Katora, floats above the forest via a magical binding (yup, it’s a fantasy). Katora normally can’t fly and it’s a malevolent creature that binds her, but for a minute she feels a rush of adrenaline that gives her an intense high and sense of freedom. When I think about this part, I always hear the long musical beginning of the live version of Naveed/Life by Our Lady Peace (pretty much my favorite band of all time). This song gives me the same kind of feeling I imagined Katora having when I wrote that scene.

In my reimagining of The Little Mermaid, one of the main characters Poe is in love with his best friend, but he thinks she’s never going to love him back. Naturally, his song is Jason Mraz’s If It Kills Me. The lyrics “Well, all I really want to do is love you/A kind much closer than friends use/But I still can’t say it after all we’ve been through” are such a perfect description of how he feels.

And then there’s this new idea that’s been percolating in my imagination for a few months now. This one is rife with musical inspiration. The original idea popped into my head while I was listening to Godsmack’s song Voodoo. I heard the lyric “Never did I wanna be here again/And I don’t remember why I came” and a whole scenario played out in my brain like a mini-movie.

Then I realized (as I often realize when I think I’ve had an inkling of an original thought) that my idea was just a YA dystopian ripoff of The Bourne Identity with a female teenager as Bourne. So I decided to actually read the book instead of watch the movie yet again (really, who can get enough of Matt Damon as a reluctant assassin?).

Anyway (I do digress), that’s not the only song that has inspired this new story. The main character (who may or may not have a name that was inspired by the lead sing of the aforementioned favorite band…I haven’t decided if it’s the right one…but who does have a nickname of Black Butterfly) has a past that she can’t remember, but may somewhat be described by Civil Twilight’s song Soldier.

And seeing as the opening scene of this story was inspired by a song, it’s fitting that the closing scene was also inspired by a song: Linkin Park’s Waiting for the End. Mind you, I’ve done a lot of thinking about this new story, but I only have bits and pieces of it scribbled in some notebooks. The rest is all in my head…for now. I have a couple off other projects that are taking priority over this one, but it’ll get written down one day soon.

Forgotten English Calls Me a Connecticutie

October 9, 2010 / Katie L. Carroll

I have this page-a-day calendar called Jeffrey Kacirk’s Forgotten English (although you can never tell what day it is based solely on looking at it because I’m always falling behind on my day-by-day reading). It has all kinds of interesting tidbits not only about old words and how they were used back in the day, but also about holidays and customs of the past.

My favorite entry was from early in the year. On Thursday, January 14th, the word was “Connecticutisian,” which was, as you might have guessed, is a Connecticut resident. This entry also mentions the term “Connecticuties,” which according to the calendar, was coined by American linguist Allen Walker Read and was “reserved for pretty girls.” I like to think of myself as a Connecticutie.

A recent entry noted that the first Sunday of September was once Grandfather’s Day, which referenced C.E. Humphry’s Manners for Women. In this book, it states “It used to be considered rude to conclude a letter on the first or second page. If our grandfathers or grandmothers did so, they almost invariably apologised for a brevity that in those days had the effect of curtness.”

The entry also notes that Samuel Johnson once wrote, “A short letter…is, in my opinion, an insult like that of a slight bow or cursory salutation…”

I can hardly imagine a time when brevity was rude. Today, time is money. In a world of 140-character tweets, 160-character text messages, and 15-minutes of fame, it seems the opposite is true: longevity is rude and a waste of time.

I find myself falling into this trap, often apologizing to the recipient of an e-mail that runs longer than a couple of paragraphs. But really, what is wrong with a nice, long letter? Doesn’t that show that you care enough about the recipient to think that she might actually care to hear what you have to say? Or maybe it is selfish to expect someone to spend more than a few seconds reading your words?

What do you think? Does longevity show that you care? Or should I apologize for blathering on for too long?

Draping Myself in Books for Banned Books Week

September 30, 2010 / Katie L. Carroll

In honor of Banned Books Week, I decided to scour my shelves and see how many banned/challenged books I actually own. Turns out it was enough to bury myself.

(That’s me covered in books…ahem, in nothing but books!!!)

This doesn’t even include the banned books I’ve read that I don’t own, or ones that I’ve lent out, or ones that are part of my parent’s collection of books, or ones that are on my Nook. And there’s probably some on my shelves that have been banned but didn’t come up on any lists I referenced or haven’t made it to any list. ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom actually believes that as many as four out of five challenged books goes unreported.

I can’t imagine what my life would be like without having read these banned books. They have sparked my imagination, informed me, and entertained me. Lois Lowry’s The Giver (which surprisingly I don’t seem to own) in particular made a huge impression on me when I first read it. I’ll never forget how shocked I was when I realized the weirdness Jonas was seeing on the apple is the color red.

What banned books have had an impact on you?

Using Technology for New Perspective in the Editing Process

September 22, 2010 / Katie L. Carroll

I got a NO OK for Christmas last year (and cleverly named it Alcove instead of Cranny). No, it hasn’t replaced books for me, but I love it, especially for travel because it’s so portable. And I recently found a new use for it when I uploaded some of my own writing onto it.

It took some playing around to convert my Word document into a form that looked nice on the NOOK screen (for my first attempt, every two lines ended up on their own paragraph…readable, but a little wacky to look at), but it was worth it. I now have a way to see my writing with fresh eyes.

For all you nonwriters out there, let me explain. I’ve probably spent hundreds (no exaggeration) of hours staring at the manuscript I’m currently revising. And on my laptop screen, it pretty much always looks the same, no matter how many textual changes I make. Even when I got a new version of Word, the visual feel of the manuscript didn’t change much. And printing it out doesn’t really change the look of it much either.

(See, I still love a good ol’ book…and these are just the signed ones!)

As soon as I put those very same words in a different medium, the whole feel of the piece changed. It was more like I was reading someone else’s book because it didn’t look like the same old thing I had stared at for a million hours (maybe some exaggeration there).

I can’t make any changes directly on the NOOK version (I have to keep my Word version next to me for that), but I caught a bunch of little proofreading mistakes that I had missed on the Word version. And it’s not always a bad thing to not be able to immediately make changes because it forced me to just keep reading. That really allowed me to get a feel for how the story flowed as a whole, instead of considering each separate piece of it.

I think I’ll add this overview-type revision into my rotation of more hardcore revision/rewriting work. For one, it helped me catch those little mistakes. For two, it forced me to read without making changes. And for three, I got a little patter of excitement in my chest when I saw my humble little manuscript on the NOOK, just like all those real big published books!

Party Magnetic Poetry

September 14, 2010 / Katie L. Carroll

We had a little cookout and backyard fire over Labor Day weekend. My refrigerator is now kind of famous at these little shindigs because of the magnetic poetry kit.

(So this picture isn’t really from my backyard (you think!). That’s way more fires and way more people than would fit on my .2 acres. It’s from a recent trip to the WaterFire Providence.)

The party-goers were in rare form, and there was one line of poetry I’m not going to include in full…just to give you an idea of its flavor, the poet put the tiles “an” and “al” together and it also contained the tiles “long,” “green,” “pickle,” and “spurt” (somehow it always turn dirty…that’s what she said!).

i am an old bald devil dog who has a free soul and love s to eat (nice to see the old bald devil dog is enjoying life)

speak wrong mind but think from heart (ahhh…very wise, grasshopper)

pour some wine and soon you must table dance as hot as a random spider genius (the “a” tile is actually “at” with the t covered…I have such clever–and demented/drunk–guests)

if i vacuum a precious monkey chicken it will release a black bosom tremendous ly naked (well, you better not vacuum the precious monkey chicken then)

sweet night whisper e d her light poet r y to my howl ing brain (I hope the night’s poetry was better than the magnetic poetry…really, I kid because I do love it when people make poetry on my refrigerator)

Thanks to all who created a little fun on the fridge!