Category: Writing (Page 70 of 73)

Magnetic Poetry: Poink

January 6, 2010 / Katie L. Carroll

Girls’ Christmas (my “sisters” and I get together every year for a girls-and-kids-only Christmas party) was relocated to my house at the last minute, so I requested that my guests create a sentence with the magnetic poetry kit on my refrigerator. Here’s what we came up with (as usual, I put a space in between each magnet to show the creative combinations):

love people like they a r e obedient prostitute s (I would think any obedient prostitute is easy to love, so this could be a new logo for world peace or something!)
experience perfect pleasure through bald chicken rhythm dance ing (I’d like to see bald chicken rhythm dancing…or on second thought, maybe I wouldn’t.)
spark random inspiration speak every thought investigate precious emotion (lather, rinse, repeat)
electric transgress ion s will burn holy fire (That’s what she said!)
the devil s skeleton is suck ing seed y sweet & sour soup (Nice alliteration…who knew the devil’s skeleton liked Chinese food?)

In other word news, my sister, niece, and nephews are trying to get the word “poink” into mainstream vocabulary. This started when my three-year-0ld nephew told my sister he didn’t want to sit in one of the dining-room chairs because it had a “pionk.” My sister asked, “What’s a poink?” So he showed her a broken chair rung that was sticking into his back. They now use the word regularly.

Poink has actually turned out to be very versatile. It can be a noun, as in the original sense: That needle has a sharp poink. It can be a verb, literally: Ouch! That needle just poinked me. It can be a verb, figuratively: Oh, you just got poinked. It can be an adjective: That needle is very poinky.

I checked out the urban dictionary and found some interesting definitions for poink and poinky. I recommend everyone tries to use poink in a sentence today.

(Not) Making New Year’s Resolutions

December 28, 2009 / Katie L. Carroll

I haven’t made a New Year’s resolution in quite a few years. I find them somewhat arbitrary and limiting. Just because it’s January 1st, doesn’t mean that it’s the right time for me to set a certain goal. Maybe I just like to buck tradition, but I kind of enjoy the freedom of not having a resolution. And let’s be honest, most people who make resolutions fail (according to Wikipedia…which is, of course, always right…only 12% succeed).

Many resolutions are fitness and/or diet related. Seeing as I prefer to exercise outside and I live in New England, creating an exercise goal in the middle of winter doesn’t seem like a good idea (really, I’m just setting myself up for failure). As for diet, well I tend to try and be good all year long—admittedly with varying degrees of success—and I always try and be more careful after the usual holiday indiscretions (indigestions?).

A lot of my writing friends make writing resolutions. Right now, I’m working on revising a MG novel, I’m writing a first draft of a YA novel, and I’m considering doing another round of revisions on a YA novel that I had been sending out to editors and agents. I’m attending a writing conference in early April, so I’m planning my writing deadlines around that.

I prefer not to limit myself to one time of year for making resolutions. I see each and every day as a new opportunity to work on being a better person. That also means if a day goes by and I didn’t exactly meet my goal, there’s always tomorrow. Just in the last few weeks, I realized I haven’t been stretching myself as a human being much lately, so I came up with a kind of crazy idea (which I’ll be blogging about in the near future) to amp up my own level of introspection.

For those of you who do like to make resolutions, I’d love to hear what they are so I can help cheer you on along the way.

A Tour Through the Largest Shopping Mall on the East Coast

October 19, 2009 / Katie L. Carroll

I recently attended the Eastern PA SCBWI Fall Philly Conference. My hotel room was in King of Prussia, PA right next to largest shopping mall on the East Coast. This mall is so big that it has been separated into two different buildings, each of which is the size of a regular mall. The inside of the mall is gorgeous (way more posh and much cleaner than the mall near my house…sorry I forgot my camera, so there’s no pics), and I even saw a mall cop on a segway. No worries…he was wearing a helmet!

Now I’m not a big shopper, but I wanted to check out the bookstore, which was (of course) as far as it could possibly be from where I entered. I walked all the way through the first building (and I accidentally took the long way), into the second building, and all the way to the far end of the second building. Phew! I like to think I’m in pretty good shape, but I was tired after all that walking.

So on my long walk I passed by a Teavana, which is now where I get all my tea (Black Dragon Pearl tea not only has a really cool name, but it also tastes awesome). I texted my husband about seeing a Teavana (they only have two locations in CT…and none of them are that close to my house…boo). Then texted him about seeing a Pottery Barn because we just bought couches from there and the closest Pottery Barn to our house is about 30 minutes away. (Can you tell from all that texting that I was a bit lonely–maybe a little bored too–all by myself in that big mall?)

As I walked more and more, I jokingly texted the hubby that there were so many stores in the mall that there was probably at least one of every possible store. A little while later, I spotted the Teavana on the floor below me. I though Oh no! How did I walk around the whole mall and miss the one store I was looking for? Then I realized I was in a totally different building from the first Teavana, and this was a whole other Teavana. Wow! There really is at least one of everything in that mall!

I did finally find the Borders and bought a few books to be signed by authors I would be meeting at the conference the next day (more on that to come).

One last thing before I go…Mary Cole of Andrea Brown Literary Agency is hosting a query contest over at her Kidlit website. Good luck to those who enter!

Karaoke and My Favorite Punctuation

September 24, 2009 / Katie L. Carroll

I think I heard “I Love You Period” at a karaoke night (I generally don’t get up and sing myself, except to maybe provide backup when the girls get up and do “Baby Got Back” or “Ice Ice Baby“). It’s really quite a terrible song, but I thought it fitting for National Punctuation Day (yeah, yeah, we all know I’m a big dork). Here’s the full chorus in all its glory:

I love you period
Do you love me question mark
Please, please exclamation point
I want to hold you in parentheses

I’ve been thinking about what my favorite punctuation mark is, and I have to say I don’t think I can decide. I’m a big fan of the semicolon; yet I also really enjoy ellipses…and I’m sure you have all noticed how often I like to use parentheses (they’re great for asides). What’s your favorite?

Feeling A Story Despite A Language Barrier

September 2, 2009 / Katie L. Carroll

My nephew and sister showed me this clip of the Ukraine’s Got Talent winner and it was so moving I had to share it. (And for once I had something to show my husband on YouTube that he hadn’t already seen!)

I won’t pretend to understand all the symbolism of the piece (seeing as I’ve never been to the Ukraine or lived in a war-torn country), but it was certainly impressive. The speed and accuracy with which Ms. Simonova drops, moves, and swipes the sand around the light board is amazing. I love how she layers the images to merge one into another instead of wiping the whole board clean and starting over. Her musical choices (my favorite was Apocalypitca’s rendition of Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters”) were also effective in setting the tone of the piece and assisting the transitions.

As a writer, I felt like this was a lesson in story-telling. There was so much to learn from this piece: establishing voice and tone, use of symbolism, flawless transitions, engaging multiple senses, drama, story arch, relevance to the real world, emotional connection, character. It was all there. And even though it was on a Ukrainian television show, there was really no language barrier to deal with. I love words and language, but this piece just goes to show that they are limited in ways that art isn’t.

What did you think? Oh, and keep an eye out for my next post about another multisensory art form (one I have actually experienced first-hand).