Bibelot & other words; No I don't spend too much time online?

Dictionary.com's word of the day is bibelot! You heard it here first! (Well, probably.) Now go look up anfractuously. Just because you know defenestration and antidisestablishmentarianism doesn't mean you have to pretend you know them all.

In other news, I am having way too much fun on Twitter. But I have lots of reading for class...and I need to shop for textbooks online. So perhaps I should get off Twitter, off this blog, perhaps even- gasp- off the computer entirely! A girl can dream, can't she?

After the recent report saying that kids these days (I say that like I'm old or something) spend more hours using media than there are actually hours in the day (waking hours anyway) then perhaps I should be more careful. One could metaphorically say it like this:

[Twitter/ Facebook/ blogs/ insert preferred social media of choice] is a drug. You start saying you'll only use it a little bit and then suddenly you find yourself saying, I can quit whenever I want. Only you don't. And slowly it consumes your normal life, until your social life is semi-dependent on it and you just can't stop...

Scary stuff, eh? But that won't stop anyone from continuing, will it Let alone me and I said it! I make excuses of why I need it. We all do. But sometimes I have to wonder- how would my life be different if all this stuff didn't exist? Or if I had never gotten started using it?

Endings

A lot of my posts have been about politics, and I've decided I'd rather talk about something more fun- story.

I've been thinking about endings. It's very easy to talk about and analyze beginnings, but for endings you have to read the whole book first to really get them, so you'll end up with a lot of articles and discussion on opening sentences, the endings are a wee bit neglected. With exceptions, of course.

It just occured to me that this question is very fitting for the end of the calendar year. That wasn't why I was thinking about it, though.

So what is the purpose of an ending? Are you trying to satisfy readers or keep them wanting more? Tie up all the loose ends or introduce a surprise twist? There are many ways of writing a good ending, but what makes an ending good? And what should an ending be trying to accomplish?

When I used to write short stories in high school my teacher would ask me to fix the endings- she invariably would think that my ending was too abrupt and I left the reader hanging. I'd argue, but this is what the story needs! I wanted to leave some things ambiguous, let the reader be able to imagine variable endings. It's a fact that only established authors can get away with this, as in a tenth grader it looks like you just couldn't decide on the ending instead of an artistic choice, but I came to realize that a lot of times she was right and my ending did need something more, and there was usually a way to fill it out a bit without compromising my artistic deliberate ambiguity.

With novels it's harder, and the truth is, with all the novels I'm always trying to write, I have yet to reach an ending. I don't know what I will do when I get there- I have to think about what an ending is and what it should accomplish. It might depend on the book, true, but surely there's something all endings share. Does it vary so much between short stories and novels, do you think?

Now I just have to keep working long enough to write the middle...

Obama's Nobel Speech- Some Thoughts on War and Peace and Society

I wanted to do a full analysis of Obama's speech, the transcript of which I just finished reading. But I haven't the time to do it justice at the moment. So a just a few thoughts and impressions here.

I will say that I was impressed. By his opening, by who he chose to quote and acknowledge (not who you'd necessarily expect), and by the issues he brought up and discussed. I like how he acknowledges the need to struggle against evil even though we cannot win in our lifetimes, and I like the fact that he uses his brain when he talks and his ideas are well thought out and presented- on both moral/ethical and intellectual grounds.

I think there were some issues that he did not bring up, and could have, maybe should have. But he chose to stick with the obvious topics pretty much throughout- although it was bold to give specific examples of countries that fell short. Not so PC but nothing too offensive to anyone either.

I'd need to do a lot of thinking before I figured out myself exactly where I think he's right and where I disagree. As he's obviously put a lot more thought into the subject of war and peace than I have. (Maybe that's as it should be, maybe not.)

Not everyone will agree with everything he says. But I do think that there should be people in the society who think differently from the leader of the society when it comes to issues like this. Let the leaders take the stance that's best for the whole world overall, if someone must. In general, it should be the job of individuals, not a leader, to be wholly anti-war and stand up for the individual lives that are destroyed in fighting. Only if you have those voices raised up, and heard, can you have a leader who argues, like Obama is doing, that some wars do need to be fought as a matter of conscience (and he said it very well).

I think sometimes you need people around who remind you of all sides, the collective and the individual rights and welfare, who can help society find the right balance for each situation. Every country's job is to set up a system in which the right things in that balance can happen; where no one person's plan of action blocks consideration of any other option.

I do like how he cites people from JFK to Nixon to a pope. It's kind of fascinating, how he works-it's like how he made a staff out of his electionary opponents (Biden, Clinton) and admires Reagan as a president despite how different they all are.

Here's a sampling of which words he used most frequently- can be telling sometimes. I saw elsewhere on the internet that he used the word war double the number of times he used peace- but I don't think it was quite that drastic, he used peace a lot too, and one cannot entirely forget context (not taking into account if he said something like, no more war, for example). But for what it's worth, and because wordles are lots of fun, take a look.

Mystery Post-it notes

Kristin Cashore wrote an article about writing. I will quote an excerpt here, hopefully with permission:

The house is strewn with post-it notes on which are written about a gazillion important reminders of things I must somehow remember to find a way to weave into the novel at some point, although, where, I can't imagine. Some of the post-it notes are written hastily in a code I have since forgotten. ("He is temperamentally sweet, but dangerous, like Jake." That would be very helpful, if I had the slightest idea to whom "he" refers, or if I knew anyone named Jake.)

My life, people. She hit it. I'm thinking about this and coming up with far too many examples.

• My white board that I can't use because it has notes on it full of useful ideas, but I can't erase even though I'm no longer sure what half of them are for, because I need them! My story might need them!
• My random post-its floating around helplessly.
• My notebooks full of random pages with snippets of plot and characterization- I frequently have to read through an entire notebook to make sure I'm not missing something crucial.
• Or something that the entire climax will build off of but is currently existing as a scrawl in the margin of my notes from English class.

Look, I don't have all my ideas sequentially. I don't plan to come up with ideas like this! Better randomly written down and possibly found when needed, rather than lost forever, right?

Right?

Nano Woes

Nano on nano- nano a mano- moano o nano- NANO!!!!!!!!!!!

I think I am a wee bitty bit frustrated. My word count is beyond pathetic. And I really wanted to do Nanowrimo this year. I've done it before but I seem to be stuck, totally uninterested in continuing my story. It's not that excting, but once I start writing I know I'll get into it. But how do I make myself write when the page just isn't calling to me. Do I give up and try another month, or keep going, fall short of 50k and abandon the story and all hope to ye who enter here?

I guess I'll keep trying for now. But I'll see how it goes.

Locke and Demosthenes

Take a look at this cartoon: xkcd.com's "Locke and Demosthenes".

I loved that part of Ender's Game- the clever way two kids could use words to change things- themselves, and the world. The scene where Val is upset when her father sides with her own secret identity, because she had thought no reasonable person ever could, stands out in my memory with particular poignancy.

But they didn't just make a blog (kind of like I'm doing right now, hmm) they used message boards and such and responded to other people to the extent that they got jobs as newspaper columnists.

Also, I'm not as ambitious. And I hate Peter, although I kind of like Val more than Ender even.

I want a philosophical nom de plume, though! It's just fun. I'll have to think about it.