A new word in my vocabulary: “Lackadaisical”

I suppose this would be a promotional blog post, though I don’t get payed for writing it.
I have a subscription on the Daily Writing Tips newsletter. This is a very nice newsletter for writers. There’s a tip of some sort each day, a lot of explaining unusual words or wrong uses of common words to name a few. I highly recommend subscribing!
About a month ago I got an newsletter about the word “Lackadaisical”. I don’t know if you ever heard of it, but I sure hadn’t. Then again I’m not native English so my knowledge of expressions is limited (does anyone know a good book on that?).
So I started reading without even knowing how to use the word.
In short the word just means lack of energy / purpose, however the whole history and where it comes from is very interesting. If you’re curious I recommend reading the full article.
I would find it rather weird to use, but maybe you feel different about that?
Anyway I love learning from this newsletter, it’s always interesting.
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This was also a short announcement to let you know I’m not dead, I just don’t have subjects to write about nor time to write them.
I’m currently busy with the other type of art I do, namely drawing.
For that you can check out DeviantArt as my main portal.
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I hope you enjoyed it and let me know your thoughts! Also if you have another word that’s not very commonly used, let me know I’d love to hear about it!
August 2, 2010 | Zarisa | Comments Closed

PWL update 1 (personal writing land)

Hi all,

First things first, below all my personal babbling, I have a question for all of you. I would love your input! I also would love to hear from you, so share your stories!
Of course feel free to skip my personal babble and go straight to the question.

Content:
- Writing course update
- Introduction of 2 stories I work on.

Some exciting stuff from my personal writing land: I received mail!
As in, snail mail that is.

Today a flyer with information and a letter with confirmation arrived for my writing course! I’m very happy to have this, it all feels a lot more real now!
I will totally take the flyer to work tomorrow to show off! I have been getting questions ever since I started talking about it. At least everyone is interested! They want to know what I write about etc. It’s fun and embarrassing at the same time. Maybe I should write something that can’t be interpreted the wrong way?

Right now I’m focused on writing TSS and Chaos. (don’t you love working titles?)

TSS stands for The Slave Story and that name is totally outdated but I have yet to figure out a new name. Hence it being a working title. I suppose you can guess about what can get interpreted the wrong way now? Anyway a better title would be The Cauman Story as that’s the replacement for Slave now.
I won’t go into it too much, but it’s about a world were creatures called caumans serve humans and enjoy doing so. And when I say serve, I mean serve, on all levels. They look partly like humans to add to the wrong interpretation. There are male and female cauman. Anyway it’s about a guy who gets his hands on an aggressive cauman, something that just doesn’t happen. Like I said they enjoy serving and thus are kind hearted creatures. And all I’m going to add is, he’s going to get in a lot of trouble thanks to this.
If you’re curious where cauman comes from, it’s a contraction of cauda and human. Cauda being tail in Latin.

Chaos is my second story, the title comes from the idea I had. There’s a world, where there’s a legend about chaos. Bedtime stories to scare children, until the main character’s best friend disappears in front of his eyes. He sets out on a journey to get her back.
This story totally needs less explanation! I still have to carve it out more, but at least I have an ending in mind, unlike with the above story haha.

Those are my main stories, other stories include the ones I write in private with my friend. I also try my hand at short stories, but so far I only completed 1.

Feel free to comment with a story about your own writing, I’d love to hear it!

And finally I want to ask all of you something!

What subject about writing do you want to see covered in this blog?

July 6, 2010 | Zarisa | View Comments

Product review: Q10

I have been testing writing software, and I decided to share my experiences with you all. This is the first in the series, I decided to just pick the program I’m currently using.

Q10 is the most basic of the most basic. You get a screen (default black) where you can write text in (default orange letters). That sounds no better than your average notepad, but there’s more!

There are several extended functions to this program, including live word, page and character counts; spell checking; a timer alarm and a goal setter.

Just today I checked the spell checker, but for some reason it keeps crashing on me after a certain point. Tip 1: don’t use the spell checker?

I use it mostly because it fills up the whole screen, including your task bar, leaving you with no distractions whatsoever. It also has typewriter like sounds that I enjoy.
I will definitely continue to use it to shape my novel, however I will probably transfer to another (better?) product for the actual writing.

Product price: Free
Product website (you can download the software here)
Supported OS: Windows only

Overall score: 4/5
Intended purpose: 5/5 (clean writing window without distractions)
Extra functions: 3/5 (crashing spell checker is a minus!)

(Since this is my first review, any and all feedback is welcome!)

July 4, 2010 | Zarisa | Comments Closed

Planning my writing trip

Today I’ve started to honestly prepare for my writing trip! I will be going to the UK to follow a writing course this year. I hope to learn a lot there.

So I booked the course and my plane ticket today! That plane ticket caused me quite a headache haha. I had to first find out where I could get my ticket cheapest. So at first sight that was at the airport travel agency itself.
Okay so I want to go from Amsterdam to London Heathrow and I want to go back some 6 days later, I want early outbound, late inbound. And in the final screen it says reservation cost: 21.50 euro. Okay, what?!

I try British Airways itself, it was a little bit more expensive at first, but you’ll never know! Sure enough, it was only 3 euro reservation costs and they were already in the base price. So this was a much cheaper flight! Actually the cheapest I could find that I also trusted.

Then I looked at the train, but decided against booking tickets already. I will do that closer to my actual trip. Though the options of power sockets and internet on the train is really awesome!! (it’s a 2 and a half hour train trip)

I’m all set to go and very excited!! Now I just need to write write write!

July 2, 2010 | Zarisa | Comments Closed