The Thesaurus

  Today I wanted to talk about one of my favorite things in the world to use when I am writing: The Thesaurus. I love my thesaurus and Thesaurus.com. They have both saved my life while writing papers for classes, for blogging, for my creative writing, and for my personal writing. Now part of that is I have a learning disorder. It is just for math and spelling, when I try to remember how to do something like a math formula or spelling my brain just freezes. Now it does not matter how big the word or how complicated the formula I blank out. For the word ‘complicated’ I had to look it up. I spelled complex then looked at the synonyms to find it. Now this made my younger life so much harder than it had to be. My parents understood what was going on but my school(s) did not. They just thought that I would lazy or in the case of one teacher retarded. That teacher was the reason I was taken and tested for learning disorders and IQ. My mother, proudly, to this day says that my IQ is much higher than that of the teacher in question.

So how does this wonderful technology help the writer? Well I have already shown you one way; in that when you cannot remember how to spell a word you can just look it up. Google has smart text. As you are typing Google will try and guess what you are trying to say. Now I have defeated Google with words I am looking for. And I say this all modesty I have made Google have self-doubt. I now that some people will make fun of me but I do use Google to spell check. I know that Google is not all knowing but it is a very useful tool and I am not one to not a tool just because.

Another wonderful tool is a dictionary of synonyms and antonyms. I have two copies in my house. One that travels with me to class and out and about; the other one stays in my library in the house. I use that when I cannot remember what word I want when all I can remember is what the word means. So when I have my brain freeze I can remember what is does not mean. It is also useful because they do tell you more words that mean the same thing. I use it in that way when I am checking what a word means. Knowing the definition of a word does not mean that it the right word for the sentence. So when I have doubts about that I look up the word in my little dictionary or use Google and just read what the synonyms for it are. I have changed paragraphs because of this tool. Here are links to the websites that I use and have named in this post- http://thesaurus.com/, http://www.synonym.com/, http://www.oed.com/. Please tell me what you use when you are stuck on a word or if that is something special about me. Until next week then, je ne!

Personal Inspiration Part Three

For the last two weeks I have talked about how music and video games have and do inspire me in my writing. but I have yet to talk about my first source of inspiration: Art. Now that may seem obvious to some of you that Art would be inspiring for written work but what do you (or me or anyone for that matter) think is Art? Well I cannot help you with that because like good writing is subjective. What I find beautiful and inspiring you may think is trash and should never be seen ever again. The why of that is brain science and again I cannot help you but Google can. So go search that out and if you want back to me about it.

Back to the topic of Art and Inspiration; I remember the first piece of Art that inspired me. Well sort of. I was very young but I remember seeing a poster with the sun setting behind a mountain and top of the mountain was a unicorn. When I was five unicorns were pretty inspiring as an adult I find dragons much more so but I was a five-year-old girl so please do not judge me too hard. I just heard the story in my head about the unicorn climbing the hill for some reason or another; I do not remember why. But I do remember that being the first time that I just had to tell me story. My older sister was the one to hear and being almost ten years my senior was not impressed with a five-year-old tale but I told her nonetheless.

Now for art to entertain or inspire me I go to DeviantArt Link here- http://www.deviantart.com/. There I have met, followed, and even talked with some wonderful artists. Go there and just search for anything and there will be some art depicting it. I have some groups that I go to just to look at the pretty pictures but I always find something inspiring or something to help lift me up. Art is more than just pictures. They are emotions, memories, lies, and truth. Art is something that we all make every day whether we know it or not. Now just a warning about DA, there is a lot of pictures/painting/general art at depict sex, sex acts, or just generally sexual in nature. So if you have young eyes in the house, are young eyes yourself, or just do not care to see that type of thing beware. DA has those in abundance.

I think that I am done with Personal Inspiration. I have talked about music, games, other writers, and now just straight up Art. I hope that you have enjoyed this journey with me. On a different note I am submitting my piece ‘The Wanderer” to a flash fiction contest so wish me luck. Until next week dear reader, adieu.

Theme

This will be the last of parts of story blog posts. Not because I have written everything there is say about them or that I have added some great new thing to the conversation but I just out of parts to write about. So I do not know what I will be writing about next week; so I'm back to be being a pantser. My last post is on Theme. Theme is something that I think every writer and reader should be aware of. Theme is more than just the basic idea of a story but is something that aids the plot. Theme is mostly seen in poetry. It is something I use when I am writing my poetry because it is a good way to help your poem get where you want it to go.

Now my poetry is mostly dealing with my grief but my stories are more about isolation. About the hero/heroine being forced out of their natural society into a larger world with a mission to do. Theme is a great way to get started when you are writing a new story. I did not notice that about my writing until I started talking about with a fellow writer. My friend is a writer and she is an editor, so we were talking about what we were working on at the moment. So I was talking about a new story and she looked at me and said; 'You know everything you write about is really about being alone and finding yourself...'. She just trailed off from that. That got me to thinking. She is right, everything I write about in my fiction is about being alone and learning to overcome that.

So if you want to get a good idea about theme and how it works watch an M. Night Shyamalan movie. Now I know he gets a lot of flak about his twists and the very sad Avatar movie but I'm not kidding. For example Lady in the Water is about hope, Signs is about faith, every one of his films is about some basic theme. Now I am not saying take writing cues from him but he does tell a great story. If you want your story to have some emotional pull having a theme is a good way to do it.  You should think about your theme if you are smarter than me. Books that have a theme that I have read recently- Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson (hope), The Darkangel by Meredith Ann Pierce(self-acceptance), pretty much all the classics have themes and maybe that is what makes them classic. Thanks for reading and I will write you next week.