The Right Word

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ingridsundberg's avatarIngrid's Notes

Mark Twain Quote Mark Twain famously once said “the difference between the right word and the almost right word is really a large matter – it is the difference between the lightning and the lightning bug.”

As writers it’s important to know that we’re more than storytellers, we are wordsmiths! Every word we type has potential to do more than convey character and plot. Our words can also deepen the mood and emotional resonance in our novels.

Ilsa J. Bick is a master of this technique. In her apocalyptic zombie novel, Ashes, Bick intensifies each page with the danger of her world through the use of aggressive words. In the following examples Bick uses the violent words of: slash, spear, and pierced, to describe otherwise peaceful images.

ashes_sales-1“She registered the slash of morning sun in an already too-bright and very cold room…” (301).

“She heard the creak of Tom’s footsteps overhead, and a 

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The First Three Chapters of the Sci-Fi Romantic Comedy, ARC…

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I’ve been working hard on my novel, Arc and rewriting it from a different point of view. Have you ever done that? Hammered out tens of thousands of words and then had the forehead slapping realization that the wrong person is telling this particular story? Yeah. It sucks. But better stuff comes after the weeds are pulled.

Anyway, I’ve decided to follow in the new tradition of putting larger portions of a novel out there for people to read, so here you go. The first three chapters of Arc. Enjoy.

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Click away Dear Readers….

https://wordninjagirl.com/appetizer-menu-a-little-taste-of-arc/

Joss Whedon & the Space Station

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You know the question about what famous person, living or dead you would want to be stranded with on the Space Station for a month? Joss Whedon. That’s my pick.

This guy is a veritable horn of plenty that delivers a continuous stream of scripts and characters and storylines that capture my imagination every time.

It wouldn’t be like being stuck with someone who can barely create their own life. Being stuck out there with Joss would be more like him, me and the hundreds of stories that he’d have just squatting in his head.

Add mine to the mix and an endless supply of tasty food items and we’d be good. 

Yeah. I pick Whedon. Who do you pick?

 

 

 

Oasis

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Oasis in dp

I-90 runs through Illinois and just off the Mt. Prospect road exit was a place that meant something to a lot of us that grew up in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago. It wasn’t a beautiful place, just a typical 1950’s utilitarian brick and glass, I-could-easily- be-transformed-into-a-minimum-security-prison…or-a-school, design. It was the Des Plaines Oasis, a road side rest stop/restaurant/and well known gathering place for local teens in the wee hours of the night.

Even though you may have never driven I-90 through Des Plaines, you’ve probably seen it. It was the building lit by fire from the flame thrower Carrie Fisher used to torch the Blues Brothers while they made a call in a phone booth. By the time this film was made in the 1970’s, the restaurant had already changed hands from the old Fred Harvey franchise.
Here’s the scene.

They tore it down this past weekend to make way for road widening. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it got me wondering where teens will go now at 3 in the morning to eat waffles and drink gallons of coffee after sneaking out of the house.

Back then, it was the only thing around for anyone under 21 when your munchies sent you into the night in search of a plate of fries and a hot fudge sundae. Everyone I knew wandered through that place at some point on a weekend. Looking at the door in the photo, got me thinking of all the people’s hands that touched that door handle over the past 50 plus years. Friends, lovers, classmates, neighbors and uncountable others; the famous and the civilian suburbanites; they all grabbed that handle and made their way to a leatherette booth where a plastic coated menu awaited their hungry eyes. So many of them are now gone from this world, mixed with the dust of the demolition.

In some less patchouli smelling, eight track dimension of my memory, the words that Izak Dineson wrote in her book (later a movie), Out of Africa rose up again…

“If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me…?”

All things must pass. Thank you and goodbye, Des Plaines Oasis. You were the scene of many hilarious conversations with friends dear to my heart. And thanks Fred Harvey Restaurant (way back when) for your pencil-stuck-in-their-hairdo servers that let us just hang out when the rest of the world was closed for the night.

Somewhere in the air over where you once stood, there is a shadow of me with waffle syrup stuck on it somewhere. It’s quivering with laughter and humming a song from Tumbleweed Connection.

All things must pass. Gone but not forgotten.

Salt in My Wound

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sea salt

Question: Am I missing out on some sort of secret, super delicious farm salt? Mountain salt, perhaps? Or maybe it’s prairie salt that I should be wanting…

I went to open a box of Triscuits and noticed that the label proudly announced, “Made with sea salt.” Wow. Really?

Technically, all salt is sea salt. Mined salt is nothing but seriously old sea salt that was trapped when the oceans receded from current land masses some 300,000,000 years ago. So… sorry gourmet sea salt peddlers, you’re going to need to come up with a better catch phrase.

That, or maybe I can start bottling and selling Earth Air and Wet Water. Yes, I think I will. Let me get to the patent office before someone steals my idea…………….
And this is what I do to avoid working on the damn speech I’m supposed to be giving this weekend.

Poetry Day: Where Your Wings Were

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Crying-Angel-angels-20162613-1024-768

You know that place between your shoulder blades

that you can’t reach?

Even if your hands can touch behind

they are useless

to soothe the need,

to fill the place

where something important used to be.

Sometimes-

you can reach it

with a shower brush.

Fire and joy fill the spot

as a million tiny severed connections-

evidence of your divinity-

come to life again.

It’s where your wings were

once-

right there

part of your body

before you fell-

before you came here

to understand

what love is

and what pain feels like

and what it means to be a human.

So, tell me,

was it worth it

when you lost them?

Do you miss them every day?

You can feel them again, you know-

when someone holds you close

their hands meeting at the broken place

where your wings used to be.

The touch causes skin to sing again

and flex to unfurl your glory.

Gone now-

Tell me, human,

was it worth it?

Poetry Day- Elixir … for Valentine’s Day

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Yuko heart pic

Elixir

Viscous fluid

once known – that filled our fragile lungs

nurturing as we grew

forming out of nothing-

Fluid breathed that once expelled, left us yearning

for the fullness it offered every open space within.

Expelled and replaced by some

Sad substitute necessitating constant vigil-

Until – one day- again

a breath taken becomes so much more than

all the breaths we took before.

This breath, this invisible treasure –

holds pure essence of another

mingled in its molecules.

We taste on tongue and inhale deeply-

memory of something lost

that fed and formed us

Now back again-

filling every open place

and we are home.

It comes unseen on random breeze

Impossible to anticipate.

Its elixir

Poured by angels

Down parched throats

Anointing each remaining breath as

Worthy food

To feed a hungry soul.

It is no wonder-

Should it leaves us-

Why we gasp and whither

Having lost it twice in one life.

Hey. Is That Squid on Your Face? The Italian Eyeglass Mafia…

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Italian Eyeglass Mafia

I’ve been wearing prescription eyeglasses since first grade. Calculating one pair per year and accounting for lost or broken pairs as a kid; plus some years as an adult when I had two or three pairs; plus prescription sunglasses, I have had about one hundred pairs of glasses.

My life with eyeglasses dragged me through horrifying 1960’s when flesh-tone-sparkle-laden cat eyes were one of two options for girls. The other option were those wire and plastic gender bending numbers worn by accountants, government geeks and nuns. You know them. They’re back again as the ugly things that hipsters now pay a month’s rent to wear because they are suddenly cool and not just the state issue monstrosities you would have gotten with your orange jumpsuit before entering the penitentiary.

The 1970’s brought some better styles and totally groovy rose lenses or sky blue; wire frames like John Lennon or a big girl cat eye from Rayban. I lived in the Phoenix area then and I bought my glasses from Gatesh Opticians. Suffice it to say they were most famous for being Elton John’s favorite eyewear purveyor. R.I.P, Gatesh brothers, now selling outrageous eyewear to touring angels in galaxies far and wide. Mine from that era didn’t hit the same crazy level Elton’s did but I definitely pushed the envelope.

In the 1980’s I had leather glasses, wooden glasses, purple glasses, navy blue glasses, green glasses and others that frighten me now when I see them in photos. I also traveled a lot that decade and had the chance to buy an eyeglass wardrobe in Hong Kong for a song, some of those my most favorite frames.

In the meantime, I’ve tried conservative, dressy, mom-glasses, edgy frames and non-descripts and have settled into a few styles now I can live with but do not love.

There are a few things about glasses that I will never understand. Lots of insurance policies do not cover eyeglasses. If you need an eye exam it’s $100 and up. A pair of frames will set you back $90 to $300 and up. Prescription lenses? Another $150 and up. Don’t want them to look like coke bottle bottoms? Another $100 charge. Not wild about bifocal or trifocal lines that cut horizontally across your line of vision? Add $200 and up. Your purchase is going to cost you somewhere in the neighborhood of $1300 for one pair of glasses. If you can’t see, you’re going to have accidents that will hurt you and maybe others so isn’t it incredibly stupid that insurance companies would rather roll the dice that you won’t get hurt instead of coughing up our own money to give us glasses?

If you pulled apart a pair of glasses, the entire amount of material you’d have is roughly the same amount of plastic, wire, screws and polycarbonate that many tiny children’s toys have. Those shaped plastic things sell for less than $15.00. Total.

Back in 2012, CBS News did a story called Sticker Shock about why eyeglasses are so darn expensive. Apparently, there’s a company in Italy, Luxottica, and they are like the mafia of eyewear. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/sticker-shock-why-are-glasses-so-expensive-07-10-2012/  They sell billions of frames around the globe under hundreds of different brand names and control the market keeping the price of eyeglasses sky-high. Like vision-crack, we poor sighted humans just keep going back for more and they just keep getting richer.

This year, as I wade back into the alligator pool to look for a new pair of glasses, I’m going to roll the dice on a website I just found
called www.SpiffySociety.com. They have a virtual try on area for their eyeglasses that uses your webcam to slap a pair onto your face and once it’s there, you can change the color options to see if you like them. It’s kind of genius.

I’ll order a new pair again this year and I’ll wade in that murky pond knowing full well that I’m going to be royally screwed by that Italian conglomerate…again. Yeah, I see you over there counting your money, Guido Scungilli. At least you could buy me dinner.