DIY: Nightmare before Christmas Kitchen Jars

This is an old DIY, but it's so Halloween-y that I thought I'd share it anyway. These are actually prototypes for two bigger ones that I made for a friend's birthday present. It's just two ceramic pots I got at a flea market covered in modelling clay. I tried the plastic kind, but it was really hard to use, so I just used the normal stuff and let these air dry. Then I painted them with a rock texture paint from the local craft store. The paint had little grains in it, which makes the surface even feel rock-like. The details I did with a toothpick while the clay was still soft. The paint is water based, so you can't wash these, but wiping with a wet cloth is okay. 

This is a super easy project, maybe a few hours in total, not counting the time it takes for the clay and paint to dry. Plenty of time to finish before Halloween, if inspiration strikes you.

Etymology Expeditions: Words for Otherness

The word other is from Old English oþer "the second" from PIE  an-tero, the other of two, still seen in the Swedish andra, but in English this meaning was removed to avoid ambiguity, replaced by the word "second." The meaning of "different" is from the 1300s. There are lots of words for otherness, with different connotations, but most of them boil down to the fear of the foreign.

Alien comes from the Latin alienus, belonging to another race, which goes back to alius, "another."

Strange is from Latin extraneus, "foreign, external, from without." It made its way into English through the Old French estrange.

Weird is a fun one. It comes from Old English wyrd "fate, chance, fortune" and the etymology goes back to the Norns (see Old Norse urðr). The PIE root *wert-, to turn, to wind, is the source.

Odd originally meant "constituting of an unit in excess of an even number." The literal meaning is from Old Norse odds,  "point of land, angle." The sense of "strange, peculiar" is from the 1580s, as in "odd man out, unpaired one of three." Odd job also comes from his, as in "not regular." Oddball is also of the same origin, from an a adjective first used by aviators in the 1940s.  (I couldn't find out more about what the aviators used it for, if anyone knows, tell me in the comments.)

Foreign goes back to the Latin foraneus, "on the outside, exterior,"  from foris, "out of doors."

Queer as in "strange, peculiar, eccentric," is from Scottish, perhaps related to German quer "oblique, perverse, odd," from Old High German twerh "oblique," from PIE root *terkw- "to turn, twist, wind" The sense of "homosexual" is from 1922.

Let's end with a positive one: extraordinary. It's from Latin extraordinarius, "out of the common order." We can thank the French for the word's colloquial use as a superlative.

Sources:

http://www.etymonline.com/

Writing Book: Writing the Other by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward

I found this book via Chuck Wendig's blog, this post to be exact. Elsa S. Henry wrote a guest post about writing blind characters and then about a masterclass she was doing in collaboration with the Writing the Other website. I wanted to participate in the course, so I checked out the site. The timing didn't work out, but I did find a lot of interesting material on the site about writing characters different from you. Writing the Other is a book Shawl and Ward wrote to use as material for the courses. It's available on Amazon as an e-book and paperback.

The book got started when a writer at the Clarion 1992 workshop voiced an opinion that you shouldn't even try to write characters outside your own ethnic background, because you'd probably get it wrong and offend people. Better stick to your own experiences.

I do get this, because as a white straight woman I have these fears too. I don't actually know any POC,  how could I understand their experience well enough to write from their point of view? And even if I did all the research I could and talked to people (Scary, because I'm still a shy, socially awkward person who doesn't make friends easily), would I be stepping on toes writing about issues that don't affect me directly? And from a place of white privilege, no less?  Would it be better to leave these issues to the people who have actually experienced them and celebrate books by POC writing about their own experience? And it's not just about ethnicity. The same thing applies to writing characters whose sexual orientation or religion differs from your own and writing about disabled characters when you yourself are able-bodied. Shouldn't you just write what you know? That's like the first thing they teach you in every writing book.

I grew up in a predominately white neighbourhood. In Finland there weren't any people of colour in my class or even in the whole school that I remember. For the two years we lived in California there were, but I was just eight at the time, so I don't remember that much about my time there. I was in the ESL (English as a second language) class most of that time, because I didn't speak any English when we moved to the States. As a shy person I didn't make many friends and I didn't keep in touch with anybody after we moved back to Finland. I do know some people online through my writing workshop, but that's pretty much it.

On the other hand, isn't writing characters different from you the whole point of writing in the first place? Understanding someone else's experience? In speculative fiction you can cheat a bit by writing about aliens or fantastical creatures, but I do think it's kind of limited to just write about straight white people all the time.  Shawl and Ward also take this view and encourage writers to step out of their comfort zone.

The book discusses ROAARS (Race/Orientation/Ability/Age/Religion/Sex) traits and how they affect characterisation. There's also a chapter on writer hang-ups about writing outside their experience, talking about fear of the other and the liberal dread of the racist label, which can lead to ignoring any differences you notice between different groups out of political correctness and fear.                                      

Shawl and Ward begin with discussing the "unmarked state" that readers assume unless otherwise informed: male, white, heterosexual, able-bodied, young. Then they move to the concept of privilege. If you match most of the attributes stated above, you won't experience the abuse that people who differ in some aspect do. They also use the term parallax to illustrate how the viewpoint shifts when your character is different from the unmarked state and talk about the dangers of categorical thinking (i.e. mistaking traits of an individual for traits of a group), and unintended and intended associations and resonances. There's also the concept of congruence, how similarities between the writer and character and reader and character help to understand the character and how the use of non-ROAARS characteristics can generate reader sympathy.

There's also a chapter about things you shouldn't do, like avoiding stereotypes, making the POC/LBGTQ/disabled character a sidekick without any goals of his/her own, portraying them as victims all the time, and using a disrespectful dialect, for example. Best of all, there are exercises, specific references, and reading lists to help you along.

The Writing the Other website is full of useful stuff, too. You can sign up for the masterclasses (Definitely will do one of those at some point. I just have to figure out the time difference etc.), peruse the material available for free on the site, watch videos, and there's also info on how you can get in touch with sensitivity readers, really useful for connecting with people for scaredy cats like me. They emphasise that a sensitivity reader should get paid, which is reasonable, of course.
writeinthemargins.org has a database of sensitive readers, for example.

A very useful book that every writer should read.

Kinda Kooky

I went a little overboard in the Kooky Gems final sale this year, but look how cute! 

Here's the website for any kooky gals and guys out there. (They ship worldwide, btw.)

Etymology Expeditions: The Genres

Today I thought we'd take a look at some genre names. A warning: reading this might ruin the word "romance" for you, just so you know.


Classics are from the 1610s, meaning "highest level of quality," from Latin classicus, "relating to the highest class of Romans" and, hence, superior. Wow. That's so snooty. Bookwise, the word originally referred to the works of the ancient Roman and Greek writers, so that's your competition if you want to write a classic. No pressure.

Fantasy comes from Greek phantasia "power of imagination," from phatazesthai "imagine to yourself," from phantos, "visible," from phainesthai "appear, imagine, have visions." The sense of "whimsical vision" is from pre-1400s, and the fiction genre from 1949.

Science fiction as a term was coined in 1929, though there is isolated use from the 1850s. The word science comes from Latin scientia "knowledge," from scire "to know," probably originally "to separate one thing from another." It's related to scindere "to cut, divide." Fiction, on the other hand, comes from Latin fictionem "a fashioning or feigning," from fingere "to fashion, shape," originally meaning "to knead, form out of clay."

Mystery is from Greek mysterion "a secret rite or doctrine," from mystes "one who has been initiated, from myein "to shut, close" your eyes or mouth, probably?

Horror comes from Latin horror "dread, veneration, religious awe," literally, a shaking, trembling, from PIE root ghers- "to bristle."

Humour is is a funny one: the word comes from Latin umor "body fluid." Bear with me, it makes sense (kind of). In ancient and medieval times, the humours of the body (blood, phlegm, choler, black bile) were thought to affect moods (and an imbalance to cause diseases). From there, we get to the "mood, temporary state of mind." The funny sense is from the 1680s.

Romance is from the 1300s, "from Old French romanz "a story of the adventures of a knight or hero." It was originally an adverb "in the vernacular language," from Latin romanice scribere "to write in a Romance language." The romance thing is of course from Romanus "Roman."Okay, when I think romance, I don't picture a bunch of ancient Romans in battle gear or togas and stuff. Head spinning. Seriously.

And here's bonus one, my favourite weird fantasy genre: slipstream. Love the word, love the stories. Slip comes from Middle Low German  slippen "to glide, slide," from PIE *sleib- "slimy, sticky, slippery." Stream  is more ordinary, from Old English stream, "a course of water," origins in the PIE root *sreu "to flow." The word is as slippery as the genre. Try to define it, I dare you.

Sources:

http://www.etymonline.com

Book Fair 2016

It's book fair time again! Rummaging through the used book sellers' stalls is a draw in itself, but this year the mystery writer Donna Leon, best known for her Inspector Brunetti books that take place in Venice, was one of the guests. I was lucky enough to catch her interview on Saturday. 

That's her on the left. Sorry for the bad pic, but the hall was packed. I like the Brunetti books because they have a marvellous sense of place and they're not overly violent, like those CSI-on-paper type books. The interviewer called the books "soft-boiled," which is quite fitting.  Leon actually talked about that a bit. She believes that it isn't good for people to read violent scenes and she doesn't like reading them, or writing them, for that matter. Apparently even Aristotle said it's better to have violence happen off-screen. She talked about her process a bit, too. Leon is a pantser, so she just writes the first chapter, which tells her what the second chapter will be, and so on, but when she teaches workshops, she tells young writers to outline, because it's good advice. The interviewer also asked her about where she gets her ideas, and Leon said she gets a lot of them from a local newspaper. She cited an example of why she loves the paper: there had been an article about a woman who had murdered her husband, carved out his heart, and eaten it, and because the staff is meticulous about details, there was a little aside explaining the name of the local dish she cooked it in, and then the recipe(!) Did I mention I like Leon's sense of humour? 

Oh, and want to know what book she'd take on a deserted island with her? She asked wether she was allowed to take the complete works of someone, and the interviewer agreed. Then she said she probably should say Shakespeare, but actually she'd choose Dickens, because she loves his work and there's quite a lot of it. Inspector Brunetti's wife drops a lot of Henry James references in the books, and so the interviewer asked, why not Henry James? To this Leon responded: "I have never considered Henry James a beach read."

                 

I also stopped by the Turku Science Fiction Society's stand, which featured Ten and the TARDIS. Also, stormtroopers spotted shopping for used books. Glad the Empire is promoting literacy.

In the "cool but ridiculously expensive" category, this original Finnish translation of The Hobbit, titled "Dragon Mountain."  It has the original gorgeous illustrations by Tove Jansson, and the hilarious translation of Bilbo Baggins as Kalpa Kassinen, for example, but at a hundred and fifty euros, I just couldn't.  

Luckily these fabulous chocolates at the food fair took my mind off of it.

Here's my haul:

Taivaalta pudonnut eläintarha (The Zoo that Fell from the Sky) by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen, Älä Riko Pintaa (Don't Break the Surface) by Katri Alatalo, Tulevaisuuden varjo (Shadow of the Future) by Edith Södergran, and The Key to the Key of Solomon by Lon Milo DuQuette.

And liquorice, of course. (The pile on the right is Hubby's catch. He's into the Russians.)

Loot Crate: Speed

Here's September's Loot Crate. The theme was "speed."

The T-shirt was Iron Man themed. Not my favourite Iron Man shirt, but pretty cool.

I liked this Batwing key chain, but the edges of the detail on top are so sharp I think I'll have to think of another use for it. 

This is my favourite: the Cylon raider Scar from Battlestar Galactica. 

There was also an Arrow hood ornament, a toy car, and a "Lootyear" pin.