Apodictic
Adjective
Latin, 17th century
Clearly established or beyond dispute: originally from Greek “apodeiktikos” and “apodeiktos” and Latin “apodicticus”, it stems from the verbal adjective of “apodeiknynai,” meaning “to show off, demonstrate, show by argument, point out, prove.”
Example: My apodictic knowledge of the history of canines is due to my life-long love for dogs.
Filed under News
A writer’s job is never done. That includes marketing – which most of us hate. We’re writers – not salespeople! At least I’m not. Regardless, we scribes HAVE to take every opportunity to sell our writings and we HAVE to use any means necessary – preferably those that fall within the bounds of legality. The Marketing Deities have established unique reasons to mark every day of the year. With February close upon us, here are some prime marketing opportunities for each day of the month.
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Tsundoku (積ん読)
Noun
Japanese (slang), 19th century
Acquiring reading materials and letting them pile up without reading them. It combines elements of tsunde-oku (積んでおく, to pile things up) and dokusho (読書, reading books). As currently written, the word combines the characters for “pile up” (積) and the character for “read” (読).
Example: My vast tsundoku looks overwhelming, but it’s still comforting to me.
Image: Ronnie Filyaw – Whomp!
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Happy 10th Birthday to me! This month marks a full decade since The Chief entered your lives and brought unmitigated joy, anger, heartbreak and questions about how someone of such deranged mental capacity as me could possibly get onto the Internet. Aren’t you glad you showed up and stayed?
I can’t even begin to describe the mixture of curiosity and trepidation I felt launching this blog. I had never really put myself into the public eye under such circumstances. It’s odd, if you knew me, because in a previous life I’d wanted to be a professional actor. When I felt my life was going out of control in the late 1980s, I seriously began researching life in California and New York. But I decided to remain in Texas and hoped someone of importance would notice me. They didn’t. Bastards!
Now I’ve resigned myself to being a hermit writer. I’ve always been introverted and thus, was isolating myself at home long before the COVID-19 pandemic made it fashionable. That means blogging came natural to me – like eating good food, drinking good wine and having regular orgasms.
I realized almost immediately the blogosphere is ideal for any writer or creative visionary. It has taken the written word and placed it into the hands of ordinary people. Whether what they create is valuable or authentic is often purely subjective or subject to fact-finders. But – for better or worse – people no longer have to rely upon established publishing houses or newspaper editorial boards to determine if they get something published or not. It’s not necessarily vulnerable to censorship or opinionated editing.
I feel this blog has improved my writing and widened my own eyes to the world around me. I used it as a platform to promote my first published novel, “The Silent Fountain”. I’ve been able to broadcast short stories and essays that renowned editorial deities didn’t like.
For all of you who have stayed with me over the past decade, I love you and thank you. Stay with me! There’s more psychological shenanigans to come!
Filed under Essays
“We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.”
Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, 1968
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“I think the truth is that finding ourselves brings more excitement and well-being than anything romance has to offer, and somewhere we know that.”
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Who would have thought a mirthful challenge would last two centuries and spark a horrific enterprise?
Last month a first-edition copy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein sold for USD 1.17 million at auction at Christie’s Auction House; much more than its estimated value of USD 300,000. Only one of 500 known existing first-print copies, the book is the most expensive tome by a woman ever sold. Published in 1818, Frankenstein: or, the Modern Prometheus is now considered to be the first science fiction novel. At the time, however, it was met with lackluster reviews – many of which bore an obviously sexist bent. “The writer of it is, we understand, a female; this is an aggravation of that which is the prevailing fault of the novel,” noted one reviewer in the “British Critic”.
Looks like Mary Shelley has had the last laugh.
Filed under Classics
“You expect far too much of a first sentence. Think of it as analagous to a good country breakfast: what we want is something simple, but nourishing to the imagination. Hold the philosophy, hold the adjectives, just give us a plain subject and verb and perhaps a wholesome, nonfattening adverb or two.”
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“Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school.”
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