Month: <span>September 2011</span>

Delving In

So, after looking through all of my folders and organising (ish) my past writing projects, I’m going to delve into what will be my work in progress.  It’s pretty strange reading something that I know I wrote, but that I can’t remember every detail of.  That obviously comes in handy for editing though!

I have a series in mind for this novel, but also a sort of off-shoot series based in the same world but with a different side of things being shown.  I don’t want to go into too much detail as the ideas are still working themselves out in my head.  But because they’re doing that constantly, I’m a little torn between focussing on this novel first, or what would be book one of the off-shoot series as it could stand alone without a problem.

I guess I should just dive in and see though.  After all this time it’s almost like I’m scared to look – partly in case it’s terrible and I hang my head in shame and partly because I don’t want to let myself down by not being able to put enough time into writing at the moment.  Moving country is taking up a lot of my time right now.  Who knew! 😉


Language Evolution

In last month’s Writing Magazine, Michael Legat wrote a short paragraph talking about two phrases that are in common use: “north of” and “grow”.  He noted how their use has changed and you now hear them in sentences such as “He earns north of one hundred thousand” or in terms of “growing your investment”.

He posed a question to ask if we really need “north of” or “grow” in these contexts when there are already perfectly functional words such as “more than” and “increase”?

For me, it isn’t about a need for these words more than it is about enlivening language.  Using “north of” and “grow” gives a much more exciting and visual image to what you’re trying to convey.  Especially when you’re talking about something as dull as salaries and investments!

So I’m not sure I really see this as a language change, but more of a language growth or evolution where people are improving their conversations with more visual and colourful terminology.  Perhaps this points to people being more aware of their language’s capabilities and I definitely can’t see that as a bad thing!