WoTD: gourmand

Definition:
1. One who eats to excess
2. A lover of good food.


Usage note: A gourmet is one who has discriminating taste in food and wine. A gourmand is one who enjoys food of fine quality, and also one who enjoys food in great quantities. Glutton signifies one who simply eats to excess, without reference to the quality of the fare consumed.

Kevin ate with the aloof discrimination usually reserved for a gourmet. From appetizer to dessert, the man allowed only the finest foods, the rarest wines, the most delectable morsels to grace his palate. He cared not at all for price, for scarcity, for the toil involved in preparation -- which most often he paid vast sums of money for others to complete -- he cared only for quality and quantity, especially the latter. He wolfed down meals with the ferocity and speed of a Texan at an eating contest. No one could match the gourmand's abilty to consume so much food in such short sittings. If it weren't for his fine taste he would have earned the lesser tag of a common glutton.

WoTD: provender

Definitions:
1. Dry food for domestic animals, such as hay, straw, corn, oats, or a mixture of ground grain; feed.
2. Food or provisions.

They packed the wagons, he and Tom, while storm clouds darkened the sky and a fierce wind whipped the yard. Getting everything on board took two dozen trips back and forth from the store shed, carrying everything on foot across the yard and over the fence because they couldn't find the key for the lock on the gate and Dash wouldn't let them break it. His arms ached, his legs the same. Tom looked worse, grey and weak, his hair sweat-plastered to his forehead and a palsied tremor that wobbled him when he walked.
"Take a rest," he said. "I'll get the rest."
Tom nodded, grim faced, and kept working. The animals, three horses, two cows, several goats and a pig, young but showing the massive size it would become, grazed the temporary paddock. The provender, a mix of grain, hay and pellets, took up most of the space in the wagon. The food for the men, pitiful in quantity and worse in variety, stood in boxes by the wheels. He wondered how they would fit the boxes on board, then cast the problem aside. Dash would figure it out, that was his job.

WoTD: brobdingnagian

Definition:
1. Of extraordinary size; gigantic; enormous.

Webber's eyes boggled, his hands flapped. "It's... it's..."
"It's what?" O'Toole smoothed the paper, set the fountain pen on the desk, the ink still drying. He stood. "What's out there?"
"I've never seen such a thing. It's girth is inconcievable. The breadth and height are such I've never witnessed in my entire life. It's gigantic, massive, stupendously ginormous."
"What on earth are you talking about?" O'Toole moved around the desk, walked to the window. Drawing the curtain aside, he looked out. The sight rocked him backwards and his mind blanked.
"It's brobdingnagian," Weber said, awestruck.
"Yes," O'Toole managed after a long moment. "Yes, it is."

I'll let you decide what it is the two men saw.

WoTD: martinet

definition (person):
1. a strict disciplinarian
2. one who lays stress on a rigid adherence to the details of forms and method

"You will not learn, stupid girl!"
Startled upright, Georgia's body assumed a rigid posture before her eyes focussed on the speaker. Mr Jewel filled the doorway, his arms folded over his chest in a military pose that suited the uniform but not the wearer. The lapels on his shoulders stood upright like beaten wings seeking to take flight and depart the ill-worn costume.
"Polish with your left hand, buff with your right, clockwise motion," he said as though speaking with a stone in his mouth and an equally unrelenting hard object stuck up his ass. "The fabric must contact the surface twelve times clockwise and twelve times counter-clockwise."
It sounded even more ridiculous when he said it like that. "Yes sir, but--"
"No buts. Would you prefer to be outside with the others, running drills?"
"No."
"Then polish properly. Do it again until you get it right."
With aching limbs, a throbbing head and a creeping desire to do away with Mr Jewel in a most untidy manner, Georgia moved past the grossly authoritarian martinet, knelt and applied a thin smear of polish to the door knocker. He stood over her, head cocked to the side, observing like a hawk scanning a field for mice. 

WoTD: benison

Definition: blessing, benediction.

On his knees, hands bound behind his back,  feet grazed and bare, Joshua accepted the malevolent benison with uncharacteristic demurity. His eyes were closed, his expression slack, a listless slump to his shoulders that I had never seen before. Falconer stood over him, tall and proud, victorious, his forearm extended as though holding a gun. His hand was empty of a weapon, still my heart beat fast, and I struggled against my bonds as Joshua should have struggled against his. As I watched, Falconer formed a symbol with his thumb and touched it to Joshua's forehead. My pulse spiked, hands fisted and a bitter taste flooded my mouth. I choked on my response, aware that unless Joshua fought back soon, it would all be over.

This is my first attempt to use the word of the day in a sentence or paragraph of writing. Let's hope I didn't get it completely wrong. I trust someone, one day, will tell me if I have.

GB: Going back to school

The next three years are slated for debt repayment, technically, it's more than three years but the contemplation of the continuation of my financial misery beyond that time is outside the realms of sane comprehension. While I'm languishing in the poverty pit -- house bound, socially isolated and unable to recreationally travel further than I can spit -- I might as well acquire some useful knowledge.

Three years is coincidentally the same length of time it takes to get a degree. I don't have one. I have two half baked ones, but not a whole one. I don't regret that fact, I do, however, long to expand my literary education, increase my vocabulary and bolster my writing portfolio and skill. I don't need a degree to do any of that. In fact, having a literary degree could hinder me, so I've heard, been told and unfortunately witnessed.

I have the internet. I have a home library that would make many bookworms green with envy, and when that runs out I have access to local and state libraries where the print pages stretch as far as the eye can see. I have the desire to learn. Motivation could be an issue but that's where my blog comes in.

The syllabus isn't worked out yet, but I envisage setting assignment type tasks such as short story writing, critiquing of original fiction written by others, a daily sentence using the latest word of the day (thanks Dictionary.com), continued work on my novel, book reviews and lots of reading of fiction and non-fiction, including classics, poetry, short stories and novels. Oh, and to jazz things up, some set tasks such as listening to podcasts, doing writing assignments based on weird and wacky prompts and regular submission of new writing to the online critique site. If I become really courageous, some competition submissions. Hmm, maybe that will be a second year requirement.

Regular critiquing though, is a requirement. I will critique the work of others, and submit my own for feedback. The submission of one new story per month (minimum) will be a solid enough goal to keep me motivated, but not be too much of a diversion from my novel. Word count will range from 1,500 to 5,000, depending on how carried away I get. As for critiquing other people's work, one new critique (minimum) per week is reasonable.

Work on my novel will continue, and will take precedent. I'm loathe to set word counts or requirements because I tend to break them the moment I set them. Thirty minutes per day is my minimum exposure to my novel, with a preference for an hour. The morning commute gets me the thirty minutes. By evening, after a day of brain-drain, I'm more suited to blogging and simple creativity. Codee does my head in! This must change, and will change. I'm just not prepared to rush it quite yet.

Roughly, that's the plan. I do wish it were winter though. The whole idea feels wintery, more suited to woollen sweaters, scarves, thick booties and hot chocolate drinks -- or maybe that's just me trying to procrastinate a whole six months away.

GB: A burnt out case

Writing is a struggle. It is a chore. I fear my life, complicated by financial burdens and emotional regret, are the dampeners to my creativity. I admire (and envy) writers who can free flow their work, who can sit down and transcribe hundreds of words to the page without thought, who can write what they feel, what they think, what they see in an internal picture show in their minds. Worse, I envy those people who can do this after a full day at work, and who have children, partners, pets and -- on top of that -- just as many commitments and stressors as I do. My life is relatively uncomplicated. There is no excuse for me not to be writing every night, for several hours at a time if I so wish... and I do, but I can't. Or at least it seems that I can't.

Have I lost the gift? Am I tired? Am I lazy?

On my bookcase is a book entitled 'A burnt out case' by Graham Greene. I've not yet read it, but the title draws my eye. I feel burnt out. I'm not. If I think energy, I feel better, even a little. It's all in my mind.

I am a writer. It is within me, a part of me just as I am fair skinned, brown haired, hazel eyed. This writing gift is something I was born with. I can't add up without using my fingers, but I can craft imaginary words to paper in a way that moves people. I believe that. I trust it. I know it.

Right now though, I seem unable to craft anything other than disjointed, passionless sentences with recycled metaphors and thin similes. The cure, I know, is to write... anything. If I can't write fiction, then I will blog. When I'm feeling more creatively limber, but not sufficiently strong enough to write fiction, I can blog the novels I read, or I can critique other people's work so that I stay connected -- my finger on the pulse, as it were.

Envy of others will serve no purpose other than to erode my confidence and further isolate my characters.

I wrote Iris in the space of a couple of hours. That is the last piece of writing that wrote itself. Codee is work, fulfilling, worthwhile, demanding and joyful work, but work. He doesn't flow to the page, he doesn't reveal himself in picture and metaphor. He's recalcitrant, brooding, stubborn and childlike. Writing Codee is like writing a third year university philosophy essay when you've only studied mid level high school. He and I aren't on the same level. He's smart. He's crafty. He's spent eight years of his life researching, reading, spending every waking hour strategising and studying... and he knows I haven't.

Only I can connect with him in a way that will bring him to the page, and I am doing that, slowly. Right now there's more research and planning than there is writing. I'm trying to catch up. I'm impatient to return to the flow. I want him to tell me what to do, but he can't until I know it for myself.

I miss writing in the flow, the zone. I miss being surprised by what appears on the page. I miss the startling revelations that come about only when the fingers move faster than the mind, when the conscious brain switches off and the subconscious communicates directly with the keyboard. I miss startling out of a writing sessions with hours passed and a wealth of fictional experience laid out before me that I never knew existed in my mind or elsewhere.

Despite all this, tonight I wrote some blog reviews, replied to a critique response and I wrote this. It may not be Codee, but it's writing. It's progress. I feel better for having done it.

I am a writer. I write. Everything is practice. Everything is worthwhile. I trust in that.

GB: Anxiety vs writer's block

I worry. I worry about money, about work, about my housing situation, about my family, my friends, my life (whether I'm living it right), my health, my decisions, my lack of decisions. I worry that life is passing me by, that I've not achieved enough, that I've failed in some integral way to be the person I was born to be. Whatver that might mean.

Worrying makes me sick, physically sick. I battle tiredness, aches that have no cause, a tightness and uneasiness that sleep doesn't soothe. A special diet combats the worst of my Irritible Bowel Syndrome symptoms, of which generally science has no explanation or cure, but the need to avoid common foods poses its own problems, and leads to further worry.

To combat my feelings of inadequacy, I make lists, I set goals, I announce to myself that I will achieve a certain milestone by a certain date or time. I fail to meet the objective. I lose interest. My thoughts disperse. My motivation wavers, flits away like a butterfly seeking pollen on a windy day.

Often I sit in one place, physically idle, my brain whirring like a fan set too fast. Without doing anything, I overheat.

Once I used to write in the 'zone'. Given a keyboard and a few minutes, the muse would snap like a taut spring and off I'd go. I would write for minutes or hours, ignorant of the passing of time. I lived in my mind, exposing thoughts to the screen without intent, with no more effort than to transcribe. I've not written in the zone for years. I thought it was writers block. I thought I'd run out of stories. I thought it was because I was taking things so seriously, but now I suspect it's anxiety.

I yearn for a stressless holiday, a quiet beach somewhere with a book, a friend, all meals catered for, all decisions made for me. The hardest thing I'd need to do is decide whether to lay on the banana lounge or the hammock, whether to swim or sleep, whether to lay on my back to stare at the clouds or on my stomach to watch sand particles dance and bounce.

I blame my financial situation. If i were debt free, or at least in a better financial situation than I'm in, my anxiety would be less. Would it? Really? Wouldn't I just find something else to worry about, like impending climate change catastrophe, or the widening gap between rich and poor, the terrible loss of life through war and violence, the suffering of all the innocence in the world, the inadequacy of my contribution, the passivity with which I step forward into each day?

Maybe I need medication. Maybe I need to reframe. Maybe I need to write each day, even when I don't want to, even when my stomach is knotted so tight that to even place one single word on the page would seem to be the trigger that results in my entire undoing. Maybe, just maybe, I think too much and write too little.

How does a person turn off their mind? How do they stop it from overheating?

They write.