Tag Archives: writing

Jan18

what?! a follow-up to my exciting ‘huh’ post?!

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Because sometimes periods, commas, colons, semi-colons, dashes, hyphens, apostrophes, question marks, exclamation points, quotation marks, brackets, parentheses, braces, and ellipses won’t do, here is another punctuation mark to work into your everyday communications:

INTERROBANG

You probably already know the interrobang, thanks to its popularity (You did what!?). Though the combination exclamation point and question mark can be replaced by using one of each, they can also be combined into a single glyph. The interrobang was invented by advertising executive Martin Speckter in 1962, who said “it is the typographical equivalent of a grimace or a shrug of the shoulders. It applied solely to the rhetorical, when a writer wished to convey incredulity.” The name is derived from the Latin word interrogatio, which means “questioning,” and bang—how printers refer to the exclamation mark.

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“symbols are nothing but the natural speech of drama”
-tennessee williams
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source: mental flosss
Dec20

inside edition.

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side eye and some intense discussion going on at a recent meeting

as co-editors in chief olive and yeti make the tough calls.

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insider exclusive – behind the scenes backstory of ididnthavemyglasson.wordpress.com:

before each and every time i post a blog

i am subjected to the scrutiny of my photo editorial board

who can be

exacting and my most challenging critics

or

supportive and my most passionate champions

 often made to defend my choices

i am never sure how it will go.

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“they can’t censor the gleam in my eye.”

charles laughton

Oct23

we write.

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“directly, or indirectly, everything we write is for someone.”

-author unknown

 

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Yesterday October 20 was the National Day on Writing.

The National Council of Teachers of English established the National Day on Writing

“to draw attention to the remarkable variety of writing Americans

engage in and to help make writers from all walks of life aware of their craft.” 

Oct3

happy 62nd birthday, twilight zone.

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The Changing of the Guard – 1962 

(one of my favorite episodes of one of my favorite shows by one of my favorite writers, rod serling)

 

OPENING: Professor Ellis Fowler, a gentle, bookish guide to the young, who is about to discover that life still has certain surprises, and that the campus of the Rock Spring School for Boys lies on a direct path to another institution, commonly referred to as the Twilight Zone.

Professor Ellis Fowler is an elderly English literature teacher at the Rock Spring School, a boys’ prep school, who is forced into retirement after teaching for 51 years at the school. Looking through his old yearbooks and reminiscing about his former students, he becomes convinced that all of his lessons have been in vain and that he has accomplished nothing with his life.

Deeply depressed, he prepares to kill himself on the night of Christmas Eve next to a statue of the famous educator Horace Mann, with its quote “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” Before he can follow through, however, he is called back to his classroom by a phantom bell, where he is visited by ghosts of several boys who were his students, all dead, several of whom died heroically.

The boys tell him of how he inspired them to become better men, and the difference he made in their lives. One posthumously received the Medal of Honor for actions at Iwo Jima; another died of leukemia after exposure to X-rays during research into cancer treatments; another died at Pearl Harbor after saving 12 other men. All were inspired by Fowler’s teachings. Moved to tears, Fowler hears the phantom bell again, and his former pupils disappear. Now accepting of his retirement, content that his life is fuller for having enriched the lives of the boys, he listens to his current students caroling outside his home.

Closing: Professor Ellis Fowler, teacher, who discovered rather belatedly something of his own value. A very small scholastic lesson, from the campus of the Twilight Zone.

 

 

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credits: imdb, twilight zone

May30

s’endormir.

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(not me, but if i was a bearded male,

with a cup of espresso, a croissant, and a typewriter instead of a laptop,

this could have been me,

so – very similar to my situation with a few tweaks. )

—

late last night (probably around 9 or so)

soon to fall asleep

at the comforting lake house of my friends

about to write and post my blog for the morning

a couple of friends

saw that i was still slightly awake

so why not sit down

 have great chat for a couple of hours

 when i finally closed my eyes while talking

we decided to call it a night

so just a few more minutes typing away

to tuck tomorrow’s post in for the night

and when i woke up it was morning and my fingers had fallen off of my laptop and my laptop had fallen on the floor and a fellow blogger reached out to ask if i was okay as there was no post so i quickly set up the post i had meant to finish the night before and balance was restored.

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“if you want to talk about someone falling asleep,

whether in their bed, in a car, at a desk, while reading a blog post about french grammar,

you would use s’endormir.”

-frenchtogether.com

May10

nine.

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From WordPress:

Happy Anniversary with WordPress.com!

You registered on WordPress.com 9 years ago.

Thanks for flying with us. Keep up the good blogging.

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9!

thanks to all who have

read, commented, liked, connected, responded,

met with me, supported, encouraged, inspired,

shared, laughed, cried, smiled, followed, or visited

over the last 9 years

i appreciate every gesture.

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“i feel like i’m on cloud nine right now.” – nik wallenda 

Mar23

one true sentence.

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“all you have to do is write one true sentence. write the truest sentence you know.”

-ernest hemingway

 

 

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image credit: scott metzger

Mar9

the history of how you felt.

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 loving my new journals and so looking forward to filling them

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“language allows us to reach out to people, to touch them with our innermost fears, hopes, disappointments, victories.

to reach out to people we’ll never meet.

it’s the greatest legacy you could ever leave your children or your loved ones:

the history of how you felt.”

-simon van booy

 

Feb23

common ground.

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my class has recently become enamored with a giant box of dinos

they play with them every day

create wildly imaginative scenarios

ask questions about real dinos

reassure me that the ones in our room are not real

one day when playing, a child asked

“would they wear masks if they were alive now?”

another jumped up to say

“never, ever, ever, ever, try to put a mask on a t-rex!!!!”

and an instant class book was born

what a brilliant title

others jumped in to offer reasons why you shouldn’t try to mask one

brainstorming was in full swing

some became illustrators

 it is a fascinating and funny work in progress.

dinos may have left the earth forever, but books will never die.

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“stories are the common ground that allow people to connect, despite all our defenses and all our differences.”

-kate forsyth

Jan25

writing desk.

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what you might imagine it to be vs. what it might quite possibly be.

 

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i recently listened to this book written and read by stephen king, and loved every minute of it-

a mix of his personal story and very straight shooting practical advice.

“It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write,

remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room.

Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around.”

― Stephen King

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Amazon book review summary: Short and snappy as it is, Stephen King’s On Writing really contains two books: a fondly sardonic autobiography and a tough-love lesson for aspiring novelists.

 

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image credits: tom gauld, simon and schuster