An excellent and moving story, Matt. I loved the inventiveness of your language- I wondered if you made up the words as you went along or wrote the piece more conventionally first?
This is a good question! I had a good sense of the story I wanted to tell in advance and also had the voice in my head quite early on; then I just started to play around. When I couldn't find something reasonably quickly, I put in place-holder words then came back to them later. There were also quite a lot of fun words like "bear-squiffed" and "periwinkled" that were in my first draft didn't make the final cut, so I suppose I've got some in reserve for a future story.
Hi Matt - really wondacious article. However, you suggest that snide is a new word. While I hope that you don't think I'm being insulting in an indirect way, I just wanted to let you know it's an old word. That said, I found your writing glorifun.
Excellent observation - I blame my current brain fog. What I meant (but didn't make clear in any way) is that it's use as a verb in this story is new. In standard English (unless I've missed something) its use is normally adjectival. Anyway, glad you enjoyed the article and hoorah for your fantacular new words!
Always good to hear from you, Matt. Of all the emails of this type I get, yours I actually read, enjoy and try to benefit from. I once came across an interesting story about Thomas Hardy. Apparently he was writing one day when he wrote a certain word, looked at it, frowned and wondered if it actually existed. Reaching for his dictionary, he was relieved to find it there. Feeling vindicated he read on to discover that he was credited with its origin, citing a previous book he had written.
Thanks for such a lovely comment, Glyn. I'm really glad my newsletters are worthwhile. Wonderful to hear this story about Thomas Hardy - how brilliant. That has now become my life goal to have a word in the dictionary credited to me and then to forget that I was the word's creator!
Thanks for this wonderful post and its rich links, Matt. Loved your neologism-rich story, which reminded me of Carroll's Jabberwocky and A Clockwork Orange by the late, great and sadly under-rated Anthony Burgess, neologist and logophile.
Thanks, David. That's very kind of you. To my shame, I have never read A Clockwork Orange - but you have definitely moved it up my TBR list as I imagine I would very much enjoy it for its wordiness alone.
An excellent and moving story, Matt. I loved the inventiveness of your language- I wondered if you made up the words as you went along or wrote the piece more conventionally first?
This is a good question! I had a good sense of the story I wanted to tell in advance and also had the voice in my head quite early on; then I just started to play around. When I couldn't find something reasonably quickly, I put in place-holder words then came back to them later. There were also quite a lot of fun words like "bear-squiffed" and "periwinkled" that were in my first draft didn't make the final cut, so I suppose I've got some in reserve for a future story.
Thanks for letting me know, Matt. It must take a long time to come up with such interesting words!
Hi Matt - really wondacious article. However, you suggest that snide is a new word. While I hope that you don't think I'm being insulting in an indirect way, I just wanted to let you know it's an old word. That said, I found your writing glorifun.
Excellent observation - I blame my current brain fog. What I meant (but didn't make clear in any way) is that it's use as a verb in this story is new. In standard English (unless I've missed something) its use is normally adjectival. Anyway, glad you enjoyed the article and hoorah for your fantacular new words!
Always good to hear from you, Matt. Of all the emails of this type I get, yours I actually read, enjoy and try to benefit from. I once came across an interesting story about Thomas Hardy. Apparently he was writing one day when he wrote a certain word, looked at it, frowned and wondered if it actually existed. Reaching for his dictionary, he was relieved to find it there. Feeling vindicated he read on to discover that he was credited with its origin, citing a previous book he had written.
Thanks for such a lovely comment, Glyn. I'm really glad my newsletters are worthwhile. Wonderful to hear this story about Thomas Hardy - how brilliant. That has now become my life goal to have a word in the dictionary credited to me and then to forget that I was the word's creator!
Thanks for this wonderful post and its rich links, Matt. Loved your neologism-rich story, which reminded me of Carroll's Jabberwocky and A Clockwork Orange by the late, great and sadly under-rated Anthony Burgess, neologist and logophile.
Thanks, David. That's very kind of you. To my shame, I have never read A Clockwork Orange - but you have definitely moved it up my TBR list as I imagine I would very much enjoy it for its wordiness alone.