There’s a book, “Toujours Tingo,” that showcases a bunch of unique foreign words that have no English equivalent. In some cases, we just start using these words in everyday English (think schadenfreude or ennui, coincidentally two of my favorite words). I often make up my own words for things. I love the English language and think it is full of possibilities. But I must say, I am jealous of some of these words other languages have.

Here are a few that I think are pretty handy:
Jayus - Indonesian: someone who tells a joke so unfunny you can’t help laughing.

Tartle - Scottish: to hesitate when you are introducing someone whose name you can’t quite remember

Layogenic - Tagalog, Philippines: a person who is only goodlooking from a distance.

link

-marcia

n other news, starting November 1, the same day of the meeting, some of us are starting our month-long writing stint for National Novel Writing Month. We changed it slightly to be more along the lines of National Writing Goal Month, where we are undertaking a writing goal for the month and trying to finish it. Here are the projects that I know of:

Robin: Is going to write a draft of a novel, 50,000 words.
Joy: Is going to write a short story collection using the starts of short stories that have been languishing in her Documents folder, 50,000 words
Morgan: Is going to write a novella surrounding Big Foot, ? words.
Marcia: Is going to write a four essays at around 1,000 words each, totaling 4,000 words.

If any other Word Pirate wants to be part of NaNoBooBoo, please let me know. It’s up to you what you want to do, but the idea is to get a lot of unedited words on paper during the month of November. If we complete our goals at the end of the month, we are going to have some sort of celebration. (Maybe at my new house?)

~ Joy

This morning, I was reading about Oulipo, a French school of poetry that tried to find new structures and patterns for poetry. Some examples:

Queneau’s Exercices de Style (Exercises in Style), in which he tells the same simple story ninety-nine times, each in a different style.

“Singular Pleasures” by Harry Mathews (the only American member of Oulipo) describes 61 different scenes, each told in a different style (generally poetic, elaborate, or circumlocutory) in which 61 different people (all of different ages, nationalities, and walks of life) masturbate.

Queneau’s Cent Mille Milliards de Poèmes (Hundred Thousand Billion Poems) is inspired by children’s picture books in which each page is cut into horizontal strips which can be turned independently, allowing different pictures (usually of people) to be combined in many ways. Queneau applies this technique to poetry: the book contains 10 sonnets, each on a page. Each page is split into 14 strips, one for each line. The author estimates in the introductory explanation that it would take approximately 200 million years to read all possible combinations.

Pretty cool stuff. How can it be applied to the short story?
~ Joy

American Short Fiction’s 2007 Short Story Contest is waiting for your entry. Don’t make it sad; enter!

The contest runs through December 1. First prize is $1,000 with publication; second prize is $500. Julie Orringer, author of the award-winning collection “How to Breathe Underwater,” twill judge. Winners will be announced March 31, 2008.

This site features 55-word pieces of fiction. I like the idea of that kind of challenge. I’m not sure of some of the pieces featured on 55 Fiction. But I think it’s something we should all try, even just to make ourselves do something juicy and hooky.

–Marcia

Stephen King said what I’ve been thinking about short stories for The New York Times last week. But, oddly, the Grumpy Old Bookman does an even better job of summing up King’s problems with the short story:

And [King] puts his finger very precisely on what is wrong with the modern short story, whether American or otherwise. It’s pussy-whipped, that’s what’s wrong with it. I speak metaphorically, and I paraphrase Mr King, but that’s the gist of his argument. And the pussy to whom vast numbers of modern short-story writers are beholden is the vain hope that they might actually, one day, get published in the New Yorker. As if that goal was one which any sane person would consider important! The New Yorker short story is traditionally one in which absolutely nothing happens.

The audience for short stories has shrunk to the point where most of those reading the few magazines that still publish such stories are reading them in order to find out what gets published there, in the hope that they can do the same; and thus win a fellowship, or a teaching post somewhere, or acquire reputation as a writer of sensitivity and style. Thought and care for the kind of reader who used to read the pulp magazines and now watches football or reads the tabloids is a long way from their mind.

King read some hundred of stories before making the final selection for his anthology, and many of them, he says, ‘felt show-offy rather than entertaining’. They were ‘written for editors and teachers rather than readers’, and they read like a ‘fraidy-cat’s writing-school imitation of Faulkner, or some stream of consciousness about what Bob Dylan once called “the true meaning of a pear”.’

This is a recipe for disaster, as is blatantly obvious to anyone who bothers to read a so-called literary magazine.

This is why Word Pirates focus on stories having a point and being entertaining. It’s why we believe in keeping them short. It’s why we experiment. Stories should be relevant to life, and life today is harried and busy and bright and interesting. It’s unfortunate, then, that so many short stories published in lit mags are boring, long-winded, and self-indulgent. It’s time for a short story revolution!

Don’t look at me to supply it though.

~ Joy

Picture I took in the Mark Twain museum in Hannibal, MO. WPs, I thought of you.

~ Joy

Bay Area peoples, this week is Litquake. There appear to be more events than last year … and they are selling out!

Word Pirates will be representin’ (in the audience) at Opium Magazine’s Literary Death Match on Friday, as well as crawling along on the Litcrawl.

I am really interested in talks about humor, travel and food writing. I think I’ll take a pass on women’s writing, erotica and spirituality. You coming?

–Marcia

Hi folks. I’m back from vacation. For yesterday’s meeting, we discussed the cancellation of the September meeting and discussed why that happened. All was forgiven. Then we talked about:

• Possibly doing National Writing Month next November. Do some Word Pirates want to try to write a novel in a month? Let Joy know. Maybe we can have a prize if you make it.
• Doing individual critiques. We are willing to spend part of meetings talking about one person’s essay or short story. All it takes is e-mailing the group your story and asking them to read it. This week, for example, we all talked about Marcia’s short essay about Anne Frank. If a Word Pirate wants to have the group look at something, go right ahead and send it.
• I am MOVING to my own house in November, making it extremely likely that the November 15 meeting will be at a new location. I will keep you posted.

The prompt surrounded Tin House’s “Off the Grid” issue, which has a November 1 deadline: