Most Irritating Phrases

At this moment in time, I personally, absolutely want to create a fairly unique character who says these most irritating phrases, like, all the time. With all due respect, at the end of the day it isn’t rocket science, really. Although I shouldn’t of said that, it’s a 24/7 nightmare, actually.

Now introducing the top ten most irritating words/phrases as compiled by the brainiacs at Oxford University. Like, totally.
The top ten most irritating phrases:

1 – At the end of the day
2 – Fairly unique
3 – I personally
4 – At this moment in time
5 – With all due respect
6 – Absolutely
7 – It’s a nightmare
8 – Shouldn’t of
9 – 24/7
10 – It’s not rocket science

Click here for the whole story. If you want to cruise through the agonizing list of the most irritating cliches, click here.

What irks you?

NaNoWriMo Winner!

I did it! 

I sat down today and launched myself over the 50,000 word mark and I didn’t even have to plague my characters with the rare, tropical disease called ‘blah, blah, blah’.

In case you missed the news:

So, yes, needless to say, I got around that wall and have set my main character on her steady course towards the story’s black moment where everything will go wrong and everyone will wonder with awe, (hooked and unable to breathe until it is over) how on earth she will pull it out of the fire.

I love it when stuff pulls together. It is so exciting and is the best part of being a writer. I always feel so brilliant when I inadvertently do things like this: I just realized that one of my ‘make the character’s life hell’ moments I have planned will work totally in my favour in more ways than one. You know how characters are supposed to change and form over the story’s course? Well, I have the groundwork for that. Sure, it is full of muddle puddles, quagmires and the odd tree planted right in the way of the groundwork, but it is there. Anyway, I just realized that when she loses her apartment and goes to live with this sweetheart of a woman, that she will have her eyes opened in a way that will help her change who she is so she can settle down and relax.

Not so exciting to you as for me? Sorry, how about THIS:

Oh, not that either. Okay, well maybe I’ll sign off then. Even though I’m over the 50k mark, I still have at least another 30k to go. Wish me luck.

Sincerely yours,

Black Moment Time?

I was coming up to the ‘finish line’ in the NaNoWriMo contest (write 50k in one month) and I hit a wall. (Not literally, as I was sitting in a comfy chair in the public library.) As I sat there, gazing out the window in my favourite writing seat, I thought ‘now what?’ I had everything in mind for what was going to happen to my character when things got ‘really bad’ leading up to the climax as well as how she was going to solve all her problems and her happily ever after.

But how was I going to get there from here? There didn’t seem to be anything left to be done.

Well, after I packed up my laptop, bought a pile of used books off that damn shelf near the library exit, and headed outside, I realized that it was black moment time in my story.

Then I thought, ‘already’? I was only nearing 50,000 words. In fact, I was sitting at 49,000. What to do, what to do? It felt too soon to hit the ‘black moment’ button, but the story was there, ready, all geared up. But what about me? Not so ready.

As I walked, I realized that everything was all geared up for things to hit the shitter in my story and that what I had planned was going to take some doing. Like at least 20,000 words, plus another 10,000 for resolving loose ends. Plus, on the next draft, I would undoubtedly flesh out some things, such as setting, adding another 10,000 words or so. If I didn’t follow the story and blast the black moment right now, I was going to have my usual problem of a lagging story and a word count hovering over 120,000. Yikes.

It wasn’t a wall after all, it was black moment time.

In Case of Emergency…

Because I think this is fantastic:

“Between my apartment and the Office of Letters and Light, there is a monster of a hill. I bike to work, and I always take a long route that steers me safely around the behemoth. I do this because I have the calf muscles of a goldfish, and because I’ve developed an aversion to feeling like I’m going to die first thing in the morning.

But yesterday, I summoned all my courage and headed up the mountain. My word count was—and still is—stuck in the low 30,000s, and I wanted to ride the hill to remind myself what the 40,000s in NaNoWriMo felt like. After struggling through an ordeal in which my lungs felt like twin meat-logs roasting on gyro spits, and my heart beat so fast that I feared it was going to try and make an emergency exit through my nose, I reached the top.”

–From a NaNoWriMo Pep Talk email. Written by Chris Baty.

Hack or Literary God?

Nathan Bransford had an interesting blog post the other day. Here’s the question that he presented to his readership:

“You go down to the crossroads and make a pact to have your novel and future novels published. You are given a conditional choice. Either you can receive the highest literary acclaim for your work, but a guarantee that you will never earn enough to give up your day job. Or you can always be considered a terrible hack, but make bucketloads of cash.Which do you choose?”

Personally, I fell into the majority and chose money. I don’t need to write the best flowery, deep, moving and meaningful stuff available to the masses to be happy. In fact, writing like that would undoubtedly make me somewhat unhappy. For one thing, imagine the pressure and tight critiques you would get. Ouch. Every time you opened your mouth you’d be afraid of using the wrong word or that you wouldn’t sound as brilliant and literary as you were made out to be by the press. Imagine the heyday when you stumbled over a word! I’d have to become a recluse.

On the money side, you get the chance to reach a lot of people (assuming you’re making money from your immense writing popularity and not your naked photos posted on the Internet). By reaching a wide audience, you are given the opportunity to provide people with hours of entertainment and enjoyment. Nice. Sure, there will people who say, ‘It’s only Jean Oram. It’s not celebral. It’s light. You don’t have to think.’ So what? I’d be in good company with writers like Nora Roberts, Stephen King, Meg Cabot. They don’t have day jobs to support their writing. And they reach a lot of people and give people a lot of enjoyment. For me, that is what writing is about. Connecting. And I am not saying that beautiful, deep, literary writing doesn’t connect. It does. And it resounds deeply when it does. But it doesn’t get the chance and opportunity to connect with as many people and is subject to intense criticism.

So, here I sit with 66% of Nathan’s commenters, leaving my ego at the door: Show me the money.