w00t. Wot?

As a writer and former English major, it should come to no surprise that I'm a word nerd. I have been known to pick up a dictionary, open it and start reading.
I love words--well, perhaps not all of them. Let's face it, some words are just better than others, not necessarily because of their meanings, but because they are fun to say and have a certain aesthetic appeal when written.
In no particular order, here are a few of my favorites:

opaque, gibbet, ubiquitous, paragon, quixotic, flask, ebullient, vivid...

There are more, but those are the ones that first come to mind.
Today the Merriam-Webster people announced the 2007 Word of the Year. It's w00t.
See the definition here: Word of the Year

As the mother of a pre-teen and the wife of an online gamer, I've been aware of the word for some time. Eh, it's not bad I suppose. It's nothing close to a word like illuminate or even as much fun to say as some of the runners-up. I HAD to click on the definition of "Pecksniffian." How about you? It was nice to see that one of my favorite words made the top-ten list.

Whether my favorite words make the top-ten lists or not, I'll keep using them and with my trusty dictionary by my side, I'm sure I'll also keep finding more and more favorites.
Word, nerd.

LOL Cats, I has sum 4 U!

I know, I know. LOL cats are everywhere. Don't care. They're still funny. LOL

..

Falling Behind

I'm falling behind on my blog posts and I promised myself I would post every day. However, since I have only a limited amount of time to write each day, (nap-time for the baby) if I'm writing on the blog very much, I'm neglecting my stories. So not posting here actually means I'm getting more fiction writing done. I'm still working on those pesky "middles."

Instead of giving myself one more thing to feel guilty about, I'll just continue to post here as the mood strikes-- while making sure that my fiction writing comes first.

In the meantime, how about a link to a writing blog with a bunch of links to writing blogs?
Free Range Librarian
kthnxbai!

In the Middle of Things

The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.
--Tom Clancy

I have three stories going right now that are only missing one thing each---a middle. I'm happy with my beginnings and I've already written the endings. Now I just have to fill in and get the characters from point A to point Z. It's points B through Y where I run into problems.
Luckily, when these stories formed in my brain, I knew what they were about and how I wanted things to turn out. The problem is getting my story to flow logically and believably from one point to the next.
Many writing-advice gurus would suggest that I not worry about the ending and just let the stories flow organically, but that won't work for these stories. This is mainly because for one the ending felt so inevitable that I had to write it.
For now, I'll just keep muddling through the middle, because the only answer for getting over a rough patch is to just keep writing and rewriting until it all comes out right--or close enough.