Vocabulary

I've been playing with Vocabulary.com trying to improve my vocabulary. Why? Because I like words, and I enjoy learning new ones.

The following words have continued to bollix me:

inchoate
encomium
eleemosynary
prorogue
orison

While I have been expanding my vocabulary, I had to pause to think--are these words anything that I will ever have a need to use, in either my writing, or in my daily speech?

Then I went into the Vocabulary.com's Top 100 Words that other users are having problems with:

consider
minute
accord
evident
practice
intend

...and I realized that if these words are typical of what this country is having difficulties with, the American populace, taken as a whole, is ignorant and stupid.

But whose fault is it? Is it their own fault? Are they lazy? (lolwut?) Is it the fault of the schools? The fault of media that writes down to them on an eight-grade level? Or is it the fault of the authors for not learning words such as eleemosynary, and using them, thusly forcing our readers to break open their dictionaries (or, as in most cases, run out and purchase one)?

*peering down*

HEY! How'd I get up on this soapbox? -.-

Plugging Away

It has been a very productive week for my writing. I was late crew at my day job all week long, and had quite a few short days. As such, I was able to get thousands of words written on the two works I've been plugging away at: Sherpa Holmes, and Airship Follies. Both are Steampunk. Sherpa is a standalone alternate history work that has almost reached novella length (and will by the time I am done with it). Not quite sure how long Airship will go--it started off as a short-short and ballooned on me. That one is set in my Aeropæia world, the same as Tunk (from Will Write SciFi for Food, Too).

I had two major storyline problems I dealt with in Sherpa yesterday. Fixed them both, but created a new continuity problem that needs to be dealt with. Even with that, I still managed to get over 2,000 words written on it. I don't remember how many words I managed to get written on Airship during the past week--it was a case of 200 here, 700 there. I believe, when totaled up, it came to more or less an additional 2,000 words on that piece as well.

I intended to write more today, but after I made that scrumptious lunch (spaghetti carbonara) I had a severe case of the doldrums. But the time I worked past that, it as time to start dinner. We grilled some moist chicken out on the grill, and we had that plus some fancy cheeses my son made a platter out of. Again, writing was not to happen.

I probably should be working on either of the stories now--and yet, here I am, playing with my blog. Meh.

No, I don't see any productive writing happening tonight. I see a shower, and the reading of a good book happening. With that said, I'll leave you with a link to one of my cats. I caught her in that cat trap she's hanging out of.

Cat-trap