I realize the Picoult-NYT hubbub is simmering down, but I would like to share two of what I consider to be the best pieces I’ve read throughout the entire storm.
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Lincoln Michel at The Faster Times picks apart Picoult’s charges of sexism as well as her understanding of literary history.
Jim at Dystel & Goderich also calls into question Picoult’s dedication to literature, and claims she’s picked the wrong battle.
Occasionally names are mere placeholders in fiction.
Typically, however, a writer selects them with great care, to evoke a mood or hint at a secret, symbolic meaning. Choosing names for characters and places can be an involved, even agonizing process. And, it can be a major source of writer’s block.
Let’s face it, we are not all equipped to derive the name of every place and person meticulously from obscure ancient words the way a trained linguist like Tolkien would be. And we don’t all have the ready wit of Dickens. Most of us need more mundane inspiration.
Here are four places a writer can turn for name ideas when the creative juices are just not flowing as they should.
You might think: I don’t write fantasy or sci-fi, so what do I need to know about worldbuilding? Maybe your story is set in the “real world.” That means the world is already built for you, right?
Like so many things, once you concentrate the essence of it — as worldbuilding is so essential to speculative fiction — you realize the key role it plays even when it is a minor ingredient. As David B. Coe explains over at the Magical Words blog, every writer builds a world.
POSSIBLES _ Belongings, accoutrements, especially camping gear. Borrowed from Spanish (where posibles has a similar meaning), it is primarily a term of the mountain men, who carried their possibles in a possible sack, described by Lt. George Frederick Ruxton as a “wallet of dressed buffalo skin” for carrying “ammunition, a few pounds of tobacco, dressed deerskins for moccasins, &c.”
– Dictionary of the American West
It seems nothing good can ever happen to anyone these days without someone quickly making a demographic calculation and launching allegations of bias. And, even when these allegations themselves clearly have merit, the evidence, arguments, and ideology behind them often do not.
Such is the case of Jodi Picoult‘s poorly substantiated — but likely correct! — assertion that the New York Times treats white male writers with more respect than others.
The thing about accusations of irrational, unfair bias like this: they might be 100 percent accurate, yet the arguments propping them up can still be equally irrational, unfair, and biased.
Over at Booktryst, Stephen Gertz discusses the treasures found in a 19th Century ledger book for the London – Seven Oaks coach line.
For lovers of history and writers of historical fiction, it’s a very interesting read that gives insight into the small details that bring a sense of reality to stories set outside of the here and now.
Writer Lydia Sharp at The Sharp Angle posted a nice, brief piece yesterday on how song lyrics can teach us to write prose that flows more easily. Illustrated with two musical examples, it is good counsel for any writer who has ever heard the critique that something they’ve written “sounds awkward.” (In other words, all of us at some point.)
In the 1500s, along a wooded river near the sea, the Lenape people of the village of Chammasungh had farmed, hunted, and fished for generations.
During the 1600s, however, Chammasungh was first renamed “Finland” by invading Swedes, then “Marrites Hoek” by the Dutch. Soon after, property records in the town record the arrival of The Proprietor, an ominous reference to William Penn, whose name we have inherited in Pennsylvania.
And, the both Lenape people and their river were renamed by colonists after the governor of Virginia, Thomas West, Baron De La Warr — or Delaware.
Digging in this little town on the Delaware River (now called Marcus Hook) has revealed a wealth of artifacts from this history, obscure to many Americans who typically look back no further than the Civil or Revolutionary wars. These treasures include plates with yellow-and-blue sunburst designs, British cannonballs, and a red quartz arrowhead dating from the time of Stonehenge, the Olmecs, and the most ancient Chinese dynasty.
oppose v. to block or contradict (from Latin opposum, meaning “mammal that contradicts everything you believed about mammals”)
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