This is TWICE my posts have not been published on the date and time that I set them for!
Every month a question will be posed that may prompt you to share advice, insight, a personal experience or story. Remember, the question is optional. You can write about anything that relates to your writing journey.
Let's give a warm welcome to our co-hosts: PJ Colando, Kim Lajevardi, Gwen Gardner, Pat Garcia, and Natalie Aguirre!
This month's question is: 99% of my story ideas come from dreams. Where do yours predominantly come from?
My stories have all come from my imagination. Often it's a single sentence that pops into my head, or it's a character that won't leave me alone that sets me on the path of discovering the rest of the story. My novel A Lizard's Tail, is a prime example. I was working for a friend who had a ceramics shop where she made wholesale souvenir items, like pirate mugs and stuff. In our spare time when we weren't busy pouring slip, glazing, and packing orders, we played with clay. One day I made a lizard. One of the guys who helped with deliveries was a funny young man who's name was Marvin. So that's how my little sculpted lizard got it's name. And he immediately had a story to tell. The sculpture was with me many years and I wrote many, many pages of notes of possible stories. Finally, some 30 years after I had made the sculpture, Marvin P. Tinkleberry, in all his vain glory, came into being. Unfortunately, as is the way of things, the little ceramic lizard lost it's battle with gravity and was broken beyond repair. However, his story now lives in print and I think he would be pleased.
Origins: a recurring post in which I delve into the history of a word or phrase.
It's July, what better month to talk about buccaneers and barbecue? But how could the two possibly be related? Places like Texas, Missouri, Georgia, North Caroline, and Tennessee (to name just a few) all think they not only have the best BBQ, but that they invented it. They are, of course, wrong.
Sit back and enjoy the story.
I bet you think of buccaneers as pirates. It comes from the French word boucanier. Boucaniers were 17th century hunters who lived in Haiti (the western half of the island of Hispaniola) hunting wild boar and cattle. A boucanier made barbacoa which is Spanish for barbecue. The boucanier cooked his meat on a boucan which is French for the Brazilian word buccan. A buccan was a kind of grill on which the indigenous peoples (ie Caribs) roasted human flesh and other meats.
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| The island of Hispaniola. Haiti on the left, Santo Domingo on the right. |
Eventually those French hunters must have gotten tired of barbecuing meat in the heat of the tropics, so they decided to try robbing ships on the high seas instead. Thus, from a buccan, a cannibal's roasting pit, we get barbecue and buccaneer. Now, at your next family BBQ see how many you can gross out with a story about cannibals and their buccans.
LoanWord: A word adopted from a foreign language with little or no modification. Today's loanwords come the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, the Taino. They were not the cannibals. Cannibalism has been attributed to the fierce and war-like Caribs, after which the Caribbean is named. However, there is no evidence that they were cannibles. I pronounce it CARE-ib-bee-an as the people were called CARE-ibs not ca-RIBs. Saying ca-RIB-be-an has never sounded right to me. Other loanwords are from indigenous peoples of North, Central, and South American. From the Taino we get: Canoe, Iguana, Guava, Hurricane, Manatee, Hammock, Maize, Cassava, Cay (pronounced kee), and Savanna. From the Indigenous peoples of North, Central, and South America we get: Moccasin, Chocolate, Caribou, Chipmunk, Hickory, Hominy, Moose, Opossum, Pecan, Persimmon, Racoon, Skunk, Squash, Chili, Tomato, and Jerky.
AOM, America's Only Marsupial
Opossum rummaged around in the canoe looking for something to eat. Iguana watched from high in a tree while eating a guava. Opossum found plenty of food but the tomatoes were too mushy, the jerky too hard, the chili too hot. But then he discovered the chocolate.
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Being Thankful
Today I'm thankful for a slight backing off of the heat. 11 days of it being 100 degrees or better was a bit much. The highest it got was 106. We've even had a little much needed rain!
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So, where do your story ideas come from? Are you surprised by the origin of any of the loanwords? And how about those Caribs giving us barbeque?
Marvin P. Tinkleberry is an excellent name. It's horribly hot here, too. In the 90s every day but feels like 100 something and a thunderstorm nearly every afternoon. The dogs and I are tired of it.
ReplyDeleteLove,
Janie
Sorry your lizard got broken. And that your post was late. No idea why.
ReplyDeleteMiserably hot here right now.
That's a drag that post didn't publish. It's cool that you can think of a sentence or idea and come up with a story idea.
ReplyDeleteMarvin was such a delightful character, too. I'd love to see more of his adventures.
ReplyDelete