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Your Writers Really Are Crazy

The Independent explores the links between creativity and mental illness:

At first glance, Einstein, Salvador Dali, Tony Hancock, and Beach Boy Brian Wilson would seem to have little in common. Their areas of physics, modern art, comedy, and rock music, are light years apart. So what, if anything, could possibly link minds that gave the world the theory of relativity, great surreal art, iconic comedy, and songs about surfing?

According to new research, psychosis could be the answer. Creative minds in all kinds of areas, from science to poetry, and mathematics to humour, may have traits associated with psychosis. Such traits may allow the unusual and sometimes bizarre thought processes associated with mental illness to fuel creativity. The theory is based on the idea that there is no clear dividing line between the healthy and the mentally ill. Rather, there is a continuum, with some people having psychotic traits without having the debilitating symptoms.

100 Most Beautiful Words in English

"Dr. Goodword" has put together a list of the "100 Most Beautiful Words in English."  This assemblage of comely, evocative, and felicitous words is sure to bring a smile to your lips, though some might argue that beauty is ineffable and that the lilt and glamour of a language cannot be captured so easily. Brood if you must. Murmur that your favorite words have been left off the list. With the plethora of words in the English language, any success in this kind of endeavor is ephemeral, evanescent, or a fluke. But maybe reflecting on such things can bring about an epiphany. Who knows? It is worth some dalliance...

Malaysia: God vs. Lord and the Use of Allah

The Malaysian Insider reports on the Roman Catholic Church in Malaysia's legal battle for the right to use the term "Allah" to refer to God. While the case is pending, the

...editor of The Herald, Rev Father Lawrence Andrew verified that the weekly had stopped using the word “Allah” to refer to the Christian God in both its English and Malay-language sections.

“At the moment we’re not using the word ‘Allah’. We’re using the word ‘Tuhan’ in the Malay section, which is not the correct word,” he told The Malaysian Insider, adding it had received letters from concerned Catholics who were confused by the sudden change in the theological terms used to tell apart the different aspects of God.

“When do we say ‘God’ and when do we say ‘Lord’?” Fr Lawrence highlighted, pointing out that “Allah” was used to differentiate God the Father from His incarnation as Jesus, the “Christ” which also means “the Lord”.

They Learn, You Win

Here is a novel way to put together a dictionary of religious philosophy: make the book a class project. At St. Olaf College, professor Charles Talafierro challenged students in his Philosophy of Religion seminar

... to define difficult, often complex religious terms and concepts for a reference book and companion guide, which will be published by Scarecrow Press in 2010.

For the project, each of the participating students was assigned several religious term or historical figures. Their goal: to conclusively define each term in a single, short entry, often no longer than 12 to 15 sentences in length.

The students will receive credit for their work, along with other scholars involved in the project. All the entries are edited by Talafierro, who expects "the final product [to] be around 240 pages long, and contain roughly 300 definitions."

 

Happy Swimming

William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White's The Elements of Style turns 50 today. While not everyone is in favor of the book, the slim and witty volume, first published in 1959, reminds us:

The language is perpetually in flux: it is a living stream, shifting, changing, receiving new strength from a thousand tributaries, losing old forms in the backwaters of time. To suggest that a young writer not swim in the main stream of this turbulence is foolishness indeed, and such is not the intent of these cautionary remarks. .... the beginner [should] err on the side of ... established usage. No idiom is taboo, no accent forbidden; there is simply a better chance of doing well if the writer holds a steady course, enters the stream of English quietly, and does not thrash about.

For Whom Do We Write?

From the Science Fiction and Fantasy Novelists Web site:

For whom do we write?  And before you answer that you write for yourself, and that you'd write even if you knew you could never sell anything, think long and hard about whether that's really true. It's my knee-jerk response; it's certainly the answer I want to give and want to believe. The truth is a bit more complicated.

Read the rest of the article here.

Varieties of English

If your editor or translator is stumped by a strange phrase in an English manuscript, perhaps the sites below can be of help. If not, they might  serve to bring some light hearted fun to your day!

• World Wide Words - a site on international English from a British viewpoint
• Opentopia – explains the differences of Indian and English languages and goes into the influences and history along with many links to understand it better.
• Dictionary of Indian English – good place for reference material to check the combination of native Indian with the English influence.
• Center for Applied Linguistics resource page on African American English  - explains dialects and the history of African English and the differences it creates.
• English to Pig Latin Translator – link to actually translate whatever you want into Pig Latin.
• Dunglish – shows the combination of German and English and examples of such.
• Chinglish – hilarious examples of pictures of signs lost in translation
• Spanglish - a compilation of terms that mix English and Spanish languages, with emphasis on computer jargon
• South African English - borrows from Afrikaans, African languages, Malay and Portuguese.

Even The Author of The Shack Had To Be Pushed By His Editor

William P. Young's The Shack, has been "the #1 New York Times bestseller 36 weeks running, with 6 million in print," as advertised by Windblown Media, the publishing company founded by Young's pastor friends Wayne Jacobsen and Brad Cummings to publish his work after it had been rejected by many Christian publishing houses. The process of bringing the novel to light wasn't easy, however. At Your Writer's Group, Mick Silva interviews Wayne Jacobsen, the publisher:

Paul (Young), Brad (Cummings) and I worked for about 16 months bringing out the more dramatic elements, the essence of the story, and cutting back on some of the more theologically loaded or simply curious elements. Through the restructuring, we wanted to be as faithful to Paul’s original idea as possible ...

I felt he had a great book here and Paul wasn’t motivated to do the rewrites we thought needed to be done. At one point the three of us and Bobby Downes of Downes Brothers Entertainment sat down to storyboard the movie and suggest changes in the book. Even with that, Paul wanted me to help. Eventually I felt a nudge from the Spirit to do so and rewrote a chapter to show him what I was talking about. Then I did another, and then Brad got involved and it started to grab him, so we kept going ... I was using Paul’s words and working to keep it his vision. I’d never done that as an editor ...

A Twitter Style Guide

Just two weeks ago we noted that publishers are using Twitter. Now, The New York Times notes the creation of a new style guide for Twitter users, which "will revolve around eight key lessons from the Twitter universe, such as the importance of simplicity, honesty and humor." The book will also include "a mini-dictionary of Twitter lingo, like “retweet,” the reposting of another Twitterer’s message, or “twoosh,” a message that is exactly 140 characters." 

Behind Jesus in Beijing

Journalist David Aikman shares what prompted him to write the best-selling Jesus in Beijing:

I think the best place to start is, Why did I write this book? Why write a book about Christianity in China?

Well, the first and obvious answer is: I was asked to write the book about this.

Who asked me?

Two very different kinds of people. The first were leaders of various house church networks whom I met from 1989 onwards in Henan, Wuhan, in Guangzhou and in the United States, actually. They said to me, ‘Will you please write a book about what we are doing, what we are seeing, in China?' ...

The second thing was I got a phone call in the spring of 2001 to appear on the TV program “Nightline.”

[When the program aired,] a senior editor of a mainstream, very prestigious, New York publishing house who [had seen it] wrote me a letter saying, ‘Would you like to write a book about this?'

Now, until that point, the idea of a book had not occurred to me ... But the combination of the request from leaders of the house churches and an interest from a major New York publishing house really got me moving...

Is there someone you know who has a passion for a topic, the ability to write, and a way to reach the public, but who might never have thought about writing book about it? Who? Have you approached that  person?