Poetics Serendipity

9:25 a.m. — San Antonio

listening to Neil Diamond singing Cracklin’ Rosie

Hello, everyone. I would like someone to do something about the weather, please. It is December. I don’t want my temperatures to be climbing towards the 80’s. I am somewhat mollified, for the moment, by having the first Pannetone of the season, just now. Links, you say? Let me look in the bag…:

1] The site Write to Done has an essay with an interesting thesis, summed up in its title: Why More Practice Can Make You a Worse Writer and What to Do Instead. The author, D Bnonn Tennant has written the piece for narrative fiction and non-fiction, but his theory on practice has some valuable insights for all writers.

2] Have you ever encountered a word and learned that it meant the opposite of what you remembered? If so, you may have come across a contronym. A contronym, often referred to as a Janus word or auto-antonym, is a word that evokes contradictory or reverse meanings depending on the context. These are the opening sentences to Kimberly Joki’s Grammarly post on verbs that are contronyms. Being a word stalker, I found it fascinating, and fun. to have pointed out clearly what I vaguely knew. (Grammarly)

3] Finally, something to amuse you: Word Origins in Plain Sight, words by Arika Okrent, pictures by Sean O’Neill.

I will see you Tuesday for our next image prompt and Thursday for links.

Happy writing, everyone.

P.S. There is nothing quite like having the nearby workers turn off the electricity as one pushes publish.