Category: words

In The Great Room

It is a mild and sunny Monday afternoon and I am happy and healthy here in New York City.

At the moment I’m working on my NaNoWriMo trying to increase a word count that currently sits at just past 45,000 words. I gotta get 5,000 more written by Friday to make it past the goal line.

I think I can I think I can.

In order to inspire myself, I’m sitting in the great room at the New York City Public library tapping away at the keys to my MacBook.

It really is a great room:




Copyright 2010, Karen Fayeth. Taken with an iPhone5 using the onboard app and the panorama function


Downstairs there is a free exhibition of some artifacts from Charles Dickens. Among these treasures is the late Mr. Dickens pen and inkwell. Now that really is inspiring.




Copyright 2012, Karen Fayeth. Taken with an iPhone5 and the Camera+ app.


Here I lament tapping away at the keys, trying to make the words accumulate into something good while our man Charles scribbled them all out longhand, dipping pen into ink every so often.

I suppose one might be a bit more thoughtful about the words if one had to write them out one by one in pen and ink, eh?

For me, I can’t imagine going back to even writing on a typewriter. I remember having to type up papers for school on my mom’s old manual typewriter and being so head bangingly frustrated at having to type each page perfectly with no mistakes. Argh!

No, I’ll take my beat up old MacBook, words slopping out from the edges of my Word document like water in an overfilled and somewhat leaky bucket.

I can veritably shower in the words here as they fly free and easy from my fingertips.

Then again, he was Dickens. I have yet to fully be Karen Fayeth.

Back to tip tapping away in the great room.

Many words and many miles yet to go….



Words. Sweet, Beautiful, Delicious Words

Tired, morose and limp from an already rough week at work, I found myself with a few minutes on my hands before the next meeting, so I idly visited my favorite idea site and took it for a spin.

It asked me: What was the last word you looked up, and why?

That got a furrowed brow from me as I struggled to think what word that would be. The proverbial light bulb went on over my head and I remembered likely the last word I looked up was still in the search field of my WordBook Dictionary app on my phone.

And so it was.

The word was avuncular. Meaning “1. resembling an uncle in kindness or indulgence; 2. being or related to an uncle.”

So there you have it.

Why did I look up that word? Because I was reading a book and came across the word and I had absolutely no idea what in the sam hell it meant, not even in context.

I like to think of myself and a pretty wordy person, a word nerd, in the vernacular.

I read a lot and I love the English language and all its quirks (American, British and all other forms of English included).

But for as much as I like to think of myself as a linguistic bad ass, sadly, I am not.

And so while reading whatever tome finds its way into my hands, I often have to turn to the dictionary app on my phone to look things up. Which is WAY better than having to slip out of bed, pull the dictionary off the shelf and look it up, as I used to do.

Ah the wonders of modern technology, eh? Creepy, yet good.

By the way, according to the app, today’s word of the day is: locoism. Meaning “1. A disease of livestock caused by locoweed poisoning.”

What a fitting word for my personal work related vida loca.

Well then, that was a nice break from the craptacular. But one must dive back into the morass as that’s how one earns a paycheck these days.






Image from King-Sheep.com



Wind Sprints

If today is Halloween, that must mean tomorrow is November 1. The first day of November is not only Dia de Los Muertos, but also ushers in the annual National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo.

Eight times I have successfully completed a 50,000 word story in the span of just 30 days. Last year was the first time I attempted and failed NaNo. And even in my failure, I learned a lot.

In the spirit of try, try again, I’m going to take a run at it again this year. This despite the fact that I have no story ideas and a lot of anxiety about it.

And so as an athlete stretches and runs wind sprints in order to get ready for the big game, I am going to run some wordy sprints.

With that, I turn again to Unconscious Mutterings for some random word prompts. I love this warm up.

So here we go!

  1. Crying ::

    What I will not be doing on November 30th if all goes well. That said, a good cry is cathartic and good for the soul. It might take a heavy bout of crying mid-month in the throes of writer’s block in order to break through and make it to that 50,000th word.

    It remains to be seen.


  2. Reluctant ::

    I am, truly, rather reluctant to have another go at this crazy month of writing. It’s always awesome and I’m amazed at what I can produce in so short a time. It’s also quite taxing on The Muse. I get creatively wiped out by the end of the marathon. Blisters on the brain pan or something. But it’s also quite satisfying. That mind numbing creative exhaustion means I have created something and that is the coolest feeling in the world.


  3. Decade ::

    My first go at this crazy NaNo game was back in 2004. I’m closing in on a decade of this wordy abuse. Lots of words and time well spent. By writing this blog I know my writing has improved vastly and my ability to write on the fly has grown strong. So hey, rock on.


  4. Mustache ::

    So what’s the deal with mustaches these days? They are not just facial hair anymore. Now a mustache is a meme. I mean, there are accessories, baseball logos and many Tumblrs.

    Plus, let’s just settle this right now. Rollie Fingers. Greatest mustache of all time. Boo-yah.


  5. Water ::

    Well now, not to bring down the language and mustache party, but water sure has been a topic of conversation lately, hasn’t it? Water, so life giving, so essential, so gosh darn powerful. The photos of subway stations and buildings and streets filled with water in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy are so profoundly scary and overwhelming. I know that New York and New Jersey are incredibly resilient and will bounce back. But as of today, it’s just overwhelming to witness the power and destruction of simple H2O.


  6. March ::

    Let’s see…the 2012 baseball season ended Monday. The celebration parade up Market Street in San Francisco was today. Baseball is officially over.

    World Baseball Classic begins March 2.

    *sigh*


  7. Stripes ::

    As I’m writing this, “It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” is on the telly. Right now Linus is sitting in the pumpkin patch, wearing a red shirt with stripes, explaining to Sally about the Great Pumpkin.

    Then he uttered something that seemed a little meaningful here in on the last day of October and six days before the end of election season.

    “I don’t see how a pumpkin patch can be more sincere than this one. You can look around and there’s not a sign of hypocrisy. Nothing but sincerity as far as the eye can see.”

    Oh how I wish I could find a place, even a small pumpkin patch, where there is not a sign of hypocrisy and sincerity as far as the eye can see.

    Sadly that’s not the view from where I’m sitting. Maybe I’ll check again next week.


  8. Friendship ::

    Recently I got to spend three days with my best friend of over twenty years. She is family and brilliant and each year of our friendship means everything to me. We may live miles apart but she lives right here in my heart every day. Being with her for a few days made me actually miss her MORE than I already did.

    Time is the scarcest commodity of them all.


  9. Weirdo ::

    It’s a testament to the kind of woman she is that for over twenty years she’s put up with a weirdo like me.

    Tomorrow also brings the anniversary of the day I met The Good Man. It’s a testament to the kind of man he is that he puts up with my special brand of weird every day.

    I’m very lucky and that’s said with nothing but sincerity as far as the eye can see.


  10. Contacts ::

    As this Halloween night wanes on, time to pluck the contacts from my eyes and bid adieu the season of orange and black. An ABC TV interstitial just announced it is now officially the “holiday season.”

    This makes me sad. And scared. And reluctant.

    Ok, for now, I must focus on NaNo. Freak out over the holiday season can wait until later.


Well there you have it. Whew. I’m winded and warmed up and ready to write!








Image from Soccer Skills and Training.



Tweets From My Beloved

Yesterday on my lunchtime walk with Worm Girl she had a story she was so excited to tell me.

She lives in the same house where she grew up and when both her folks passed, she inherited it. Over the past year she has been renovating the place and updating the furniture. She’s making it her own home.

Part of that process has been uncomfortable for her. She’s been pulling everything down from overhead storage in the garage, including boxes that haven’t been opened for decades. It’s been a sad but fulfilling process to go through things that belonged to her folks along with family memories.

Over the weekend, she found a box that she thought had been long missing. It contained much of their family’s photo collection, her parents wedding photos, and a big stack of letters.

Her parents were married quite young. Her mom had moved to the US from Australia and was something like 18. Her dad was a couple years older and was in the military. After they married, he was deployed overseas and so for the first years of their marriage, their relationship existed solely via written letters back and forth.

She said, “They were so cute!” as her dad fretted about her mom learning to drive a car and the fact that “That ol’ Plymouth” kept having to be taken into the shop.

He told her the events of his days in details, almost boring minutiae, then would end with a shy proclamation of love.

At one point he was rather bold. It seems that the young wife was quite thin, too thin, and was trying to put on some weight. “I hope you’ve gained a little weight. I want you to be hale and healthy for my return, if you know what I mean.”

This part made me laugh right out loud. I said “You dad was a bold one, wasn’t he!” and she laughed too.

Then I told her I have some of my parents’ letters too. It was a lot along the same lines. Several pages of “what I did today” and wrapping up with a few love words. They are fun to read.

Which got me thinking about how great the art of letter writing used to be. It was such a valid and important means of communication and staying in touch. But it also provided a written history of the lives of these people. Something tangible to hang onto which helps the reader feel a little closer to to the past. I have letters from my Great Grandfather to my Grandfather. I never met my Great Grandfather but I sure know a lot about him by reading his stern words.

I also have one of the most beautifully written love letters I’ve ever seen that was written by my paternal Grandfather to my Grandmother. In his words I know he truly, deeply loved her.

Not that I have any kids who will pull my mementos out of storage one day, but I got to thinking about the early days of my own beautiful romance and marriage. We have a few notes and cards that are very dear to me, but I have to be honest, in those first blushing days of our relationship, we exchanged most of our correspondence over email, text message and chat.

I guess you can’t really clutch an iChat log close to your chest and cherish the memories of simpler times, can you? My godaughters won’t be able to learn about the love of Nina Karen and Uncle Good Man the way I did, by exploring old scrap books.

Time marches on, but I can’t help but feel that over time we all will have lost something of our personal and enduring history by losing the art of handwritten letters sent in an envelope with a stamp. Just not the same as a click on a screen.








Comic found on People I Know.



Oh Let’s Let Her Lope Again

This exercise was so amazing for me and my old friend The Muse last week. It really helped break some of the rust off the creative pipes and since it was so much fun, let’s let The Muse play the Unconscious Mutterings free-association game again.


  1. Social ::


    A friend posted a link on Facebook essentially declaring that social media is over. Wait, there’s something ironic about that sentence. No matter, let’s press on.

    Personally, I’m pretty ready for all things social networking to stop being all anyone talks about. As if this is changing the world.

    Sure, something just as annoying will take it’s place, but maybe as “the book close(s) on Web 2.0” the internets will have grown up a bit. Stretched a bit. Maybe the next big thing will be something great, innovative and useful.

    Just don’t take away my lolcats. I beg you.

  2. Fairy tale ::


    It’s too early to discuss Christmas songs. Way too early.

    However, if we were going to discuss Christmas songs I’d tell you that I think it’s magic that a song entitled “Fairy Tale of New York” begins with the lines:

    “It was christmas eve babe/In the drunk tank”

    I mean really. Could that be any more perfect of the holiday season? I think not.

    A nod of thanks to my Rock Star cousin for turning me on to that tune many years ago when I was having a Very Dark Christmas.

  3. 0 ::


    Neither odd nor even, positive nor negative. Zero is the beginning, a place to start. Nothing and everything. Zen. Infinite.

    And a bunch of other woo-woo stuff.

    Null, nada, naught, nuh-uh, nope, zilch.

    Sort of beautiful in it’s perfection, really.

  4. Football ::


    I’m not much of a football fan, but I do idly keep track of the San Francisco 49ers. Last year I even took in my first NFL game, and it was awesome.

    That said, I think I’ve become too much of a baseball girl. I mean…162 games a season vs sixteen. Right? I think you can get by with a lot of luck over 16 games whereas you have to be mentally and physically disciplined to make it through 162.

    This is a weird time of the year where the end of baseball overlaps the beginning of football.

    Right now my San Francisco Giants are oh-so-very-close to making it into the postseason again and the 49ers have won their first two regular games.

    All in all, not a bad place to be.

    Who’s got it better than us?

    Why, I’m pretty sure the answer is: Nobody.

  5. Action::


    Lights, camera, action. Take action. Action Jackson. Action hero. Action games.

    Yeah. I got nothing here.

    Next!

  6. Setting ::


    Sometimes, on a rough ol’ Monday like this, I think about going to my happy place. I have several, actually, but the one I’m thinking about today is the town of Half Moon Bay. It’s about a half hour drive away, it’s where I got married, and it’s the beach I visited just after moving to California.

    It holds a special place in my heart and features some of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen.

    I’ve watched that setting sun alone, with dear friends (and beers) and with my love.

    Here’s my favorite photo, taken (by me) near Miramar Beach, and even this cool photo doesn’t totally capture the quality of light. But it’s enough to help me escape gray cubicle walls, if only for a moment.



  7. Boomers ::


    Did you know that in Australia, an adult male kangaroo is called a Boomer? I didn’t either.

    I learned that seeking an alternative for this prompt that would let me write about something other than ol’ hippies.

    And I thank YOU, Wikipedia, you glorious repository of knowledge.

  8. Rough ::


    This morning, this glorious Monday morning, I woke up rough. Real rough. I remember the days where I could stay up all night drinking and carousing and then get approximately one and a half hours of sleep, wake up chipper, go to class, take detailed notes, get through the day and go out again.

    Now I stay up late on Sunday night watching a good movie and oh holy hell I’m a mess from the time the alarm goes off until I can go to bed early the next night.

    Time really does make fools of us all.

  9. Words ::


    “What are words for? When no one listens. What are words for, when no one listens at all?”

    Hello you beautiful Missing Persons.

    That was the very first non-rodeo related concert I attended. (If I include rodeo shows, my first concert was Freddy Fender. You can’t make this stuff up). My big brother took me to a show at the Civic Auditorium in Albuquerque. Bits of what I’m sure was asbestos fell from the ceiling during the show.

    I wanted to be Dale Bozzio so bad I couldn’t see straight. I still do.

  10. Account ::


    Longing to be Dale Bozzio, and Belinda Carlisle, and Terri Nunn and others like them – yeah, that accounts for a lot of my teenage years.

    Really, a lot of my life.

    I just read British comedienne Dawn French‘s memoir. Now there is a lady who is 100% comfortable in her own skin. And now instead of just admiring her, I want to be her too.

    I’m such a suggestible little girl.

Ok, well…back to work.