Last week I bought a word.
I did … a three letter word.
I paid for it, received a receipt, and the word was wrapped in tissue and placed in a brown paper bag.
It was a curious feeling. As though I alone now had ownership of the word. But of course that is definitely not the case. In fact, I think the word might just have ownership of me.
I spend some little time reading writers’ blogs on the internet. The really good ones are legendary: Joe Konrath, Ray Rhamey, Amanda Hocking, Nathan Bransford, Rachelle Gardner. My all-time favourite epicentre for writers is WriterUnboxed because it is varied and FILLED to the very brim with expertise that one can’t fault. Really true-blue expertise from authors (both mainstream and independent), agents, publishers and editors. Quite plainly, people who know.
A few months ago, Writer Unboxed had a discussion on the advisability or not of creating names and languages in fantasy. There’s no doubt that Tolkein was the master. But I have put more fantasies by other authors back on the shop-shelves than I have bought, simply because many of the names and languages read like a Scrabble box of letters. My feeling for what it is worth is that the English language, ancient and modern, has a mammoth reservoir of words into which one can delve. In addition, if a fantasy author chooses to model parts of their world on a specific culture, I feel it’s more than okay to pilfer the odd foreign word and use it for one’s own needs. As a reader though, I need to be able to roll words around like a lozenge and taste them. It’s an idiosyncracy and one I use in my own writing.
