Writing Gooder

Almost every language has a set of words that are inappropriate to mention in polite company (though that doesn’t stop some people).  So where is it that these words come from, and how did society decide these words were ‘bad’ in the first place?

The English language as we know it today really didn’t come about until the 1400s.  By that time, the swear words we know today were, for the most part, well established.  Leading up to that time, though, there are two important events which led to the establishment of the vulgarities in the first place.

The first is the Saxon invasion of England during the 6th century.  Before this time and after the Roman withdrawal from England, the people spoke Brythonic, a Celtic language.  Following the Saxon invasion, the people began to speak Anglo-Saxon, otherwise known as old English.

The second is the Norman invasion of England in 1066 AD.  The Normans brought with them the Anglo-Norman language, which is a variation of old French.  For the next 300 years, the elite of England spoke Anglo-Norman while the commoners continued to speak English.  Although English survived the Norman invasion, the Normans had a tremendous impact on the language.  We call this Middle English.

It was during this time period of roughly 1066 to 1362 (the year the King first used English in addressing parliament) that the elite frowned upon any English words.  Yet as you can imagine, they found certain words to be particularly offensive.  These were the words related to anatomy and bodily functions.  Thus, they sought to replace those words with their Anglo-Norman equivalents.

In trying to stamp out these words, the words took on different connotations.  They become impolite to use, and eventually transformed into expletives.

So our swear words today were simply words that the Anglo-Saxons used in their everyday language to refer to the anatomy and bodily functions.  Of course, these words now have entirely different connotations thanks to the efforts of the Anglo-Norman elite.

By the way, if you read Shakespeare carefully, you’d be surprised at how vulgar he is even by modern standards.  He’s just rather good at disguising it.

In common folklore, the poor man’s copyright is placing your story in an envelope, then mailing it to yourself.  You never open the envelope once you get it back, and the idea is that in this way, you can copyright the work for as cheap as a postage stamp.

It doesn’t quite work that way.

In reality, your work is automatically copyrighted as soon as you write something.  There’s no need to even say “Copyright Tristan Shelly, 2009″ or whatever.

However, can mailing it to yourself still be helpful?  It can be if someone else copies your work and you need to prove you wrote it first.  The time-stamp on the un-opened envelope will back up your claim.  But then you have to think, what are the chances of that ever happening?  It’ll only be important if you’re willing to go to court over it.  And if you’re willing to spend that much money, why not spend the $20 to officially copyright your work?

So in the end, there is such a thing as the Poor Man’s Copyright, but you don’t need to do anything at all to get it.  Sending your work in an envelope to yourself is just a waste of a postage stamp.

First, please note that this only covers copyright law as it stands in the United States.  Although I expect it’s similar in any other developed nation, there may be some differences.

When people first join the Young Writers Society, a common concern is copyright.  Mostly, this concern stems from a misunderstanding of copyrights.  So this post first covers what a copyright is and what it is not, what can be copyrighted, and, lastly, how you get a copyright.  Unfortunately, you have to be necessarily circular about this kind of stuff because you can’t understand the first section without reading the third section, and vice versa.  So, be patient and read along!

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Pretty soon, the New YWS won’t be new anymore.  Instead we’ll be talking about YWS and the Old YWS.  When that happens, I’ll have to update my lexicon.

But for now, it’s still the New YWS and I just finished redoing the blog index page.  Here’s how it looks currently:

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From MTV News:

There are some things you can always count on in one of today’s modern vampire novels: a breathless, cross-species love affair, bone-breaking lovemaking, lots of smoldering eyes and buckets of spilled blood. But, according to TMZ, an author named Jordan Scott claims she saw a few too many similarities between her 2006 vamp tale, “The Nocturne,” and “Twilight” scribe Stephenie Meyer’s 2008 book, “Breaking Dawn.”

In a cease-and-desist letter obtained by the site, Scott’s publisher claims the fourth book in the “Twilight” series has “striking and substantial” similarities to “The Nocturne,” part of a trilogy that 21-year-old musician/author Scott began writing when she was 15.

The letter claims there are a number of coincidences in the plotlines of the books, including a wedding, a post-wedding sex scene, a woman becoming sick because she’s carrying a child with “evil powers” and the death of a main character. The letter from a lawyer for Scott also claims that “both the ideas and in many instances the text” of the two books are very similar.

Among the examples of the similarities is a scene in which a main character is ill from carrying a child with dark powers. In Scott’s book, the description reads in part, “Her face was so pale, it was frightening; and there were beads of sweat pouring down her forehead. She couldn’t even stand, she was so weak. … She was violently ill, vomiting and scarcely able to catch her breath.”

Click here to read the rest of the article.

Sounds bogus to me.

Nothing about this is right.

If you’re like me, then you also believe Twitter is over-hyped and for the most part useless.  Basically, I could care less what one of my friend’s is having for lunch.

Yet, Twitter can still be turned into a useful tool, which is especially true for writers of all ages.  You have literary agents, professional writers, and writing tip gurus all using Twitter, and if you aren’t following them, you should be.

So I’ve compiled a list of 22 people you should be following on Twitter.  These aren’t just the “The grocery store ran out of arugula.  What’s up with that?” type tweets either.  Everyone I included in this list has regular tweets dispensing helpful writing advice.  In other words, following these people on Twitters will help you as a writer.  There are a few that you should absolutely add, and I’ve underlined those. (more…)