Jerry W Stewart

Good morning. It’s Monday, and I am in an unusually chipper mood this morning. I”m not sure why, but then again I don’t suppose it really matters why. I had a great weekend, because I managed to very little. I spent most of my time tinker with my current manuscript and spending time with my beautiful wife.

We did manage to get out of the house Saturday morning for a Santa errand and to watch my daughters participate in a small town Christmas parade. They were supposed to be riding in the Fire Truck that is behind us in the picture, but it didn’t work out that way.

They didn’t really care. They had a great time, and that’s all that really matters to me. I love to see them smile, and they were doing plenty of that on Saturday morning. I’m glad I could be a part of it.

Tonight Brianna, my oldest, is singing in her school’s Christmas program, so you can guess where I’ll be tonight. I’m looking forward to it almost as much as she is. She’s excited to be involved which makes me excited for her.

All this Christmasy goodness, is stirring the embers of Christmas spirit in me, and I’m finally starting to look forward to it. What have you done so far this Christmas season? Has it been all shopping and chaos or carols and Christmas trees? I hope it’s been treating you as well as it’s been treating me.

Merry Christmas from me and mine,

Jerry Stewart

So, I set out to participate in nanowrimo to help motivate me to get my word count up and hinder my attempts at procrastination. As the title of this post suggests, I didn’t accomplish what I had set out to do. Or, did I? I was about 37,000 words shy of the goal for the thirty day write-a-thon. Do I feel a little disappointed in my results? In honesty, I would have to answer both yes and no. I’m disappointed that I couldn’t manage to turn out the 1,667 words a day that I would have needed to hit the 50K mark in thirty days, but I’m elated at how much about myself and the process I’ve managed to learn over those thirty days.

I’ve learned some things about my style, grammatical methods, sentence techniques, and plot pace, as well as, some of my personal limitations. I’ve learned that I have to sit quietly for a period of time before I ever start tying and think about the scene I’m going to write and how it affects my characters mentally and emotionally. If I don’t, I go the through the motions of writing and look back to find that the spark of life needed to ignite my story and characters went out before it could burn due to a lack of imaginative oxygen. That may seem a little dramatic, but I mean every word. I want my store breath the oxygen of my imagination and catch fire to burn it’s own paths through forest of blank pages. If it doesn’t then I’ll gather my coals that still radiate some heat, throw some new kindling on top, and blow creativity at it until it burns.

Sure. I might eventually find the story if I hack at the keyboard long enough, and sometimes I have to, but it’s usually easier if I get in the mindset of my characters and put myself in their shoes before I type a single word. Most of the time I can read over a few of the passages from my last session and pick right up where I left off in a matter of minutes, but sometimes it takes longer. Sometimes I sit and stare at the screen for a while or let my eyes drift around my office hoping to find an idea somewhere…anywhere. Those times are rare, but they happen.

I fell like I’m starting to ramble on, so I’m going to wrap this one up with some questions. Did you participate in NaNoWriMo 2009? Did you come out a winner or a loser, like me? Either way, what experiences or lessons did the venture leave you with? Please respond in the comments. I’m interested in other people’s writing experiences, and I would love to hear yours.

Until Next Time,

Jerry W. Stewart

So, I’m 15 days into my first Nanowrimo and only 7,200 words through my 50,000 word goal. At this point in the game it’s not looking good for our fearless hero of the blank page (that’s me–in case you were wondering). At first glance it feels like I should just throw in the towel and call it quits, but after running the numbers I think it may still be an attainable goal.

The original goal was to write 1,667 words a day to reach the monumental goal of 50,000 in 30 days.  With only 15 days left and 42,800 more words to go, my daily goals have gone up to 2,854 words a day. That’s 1,187 more words per day than my original goal. It’s going to be a rough count to maintain, but I’m determined to get the end of this month with at least 50,000 words.

I lost 7 days worth of writing at the very beginning of this month, because I was traveling for my job. I found out that it was impossible for me to be creative and focused while being so far from my writing lair. Not to mention that I was in California being trained for a very technical aspect of my job. That made things worse by at least ten fold. It’s hard for me to spend 8 hours of my day trying to absorb very technical ideas and then go back to a hotel room and try to get my creative juices flowing again. I know it’s an excuse, but it’s the best I can offer right now.

Now I’m going to get back to my novel and see if I can bolster the word count some more. Good luck to everyone else in their quest for 50,000 words in 30 days. If you would like to share your Nanowrimo experiences up to this point please do so in the comments.

–Jerry W. Stewart

It’s been a while since my last post. Life has kept me more busy than usual, but I’m making an effort to blog more regularly again. In this post I just want to fill everyone in on what I’ve been up to during my absence. I got my iPhone, and I’ve sent off for replacement. It quit charging the battery, so I went without a phone while I waited for the repair or replacement. It must have been beyond repair, because the replacement I got back didn’t have a small scratch on the screen. Overall I’ve been pleased with my phone. I just hope that this one lasts longer than a month. There is a new firmware coming out September 25th to allow MMS support on iPhone 3G and 3Gs. I’m looking forward to the added feature, so I will be updating my phone then.

I’ve also been busy teaching my oldest daughter to read and spell words. She’s in first grade this year, and it is crucial for her to learn to read. I feel like the rest of her education hinges on this year and her ability to read by the end of it. This has taken up tons of time, not due to a lack of effort on her part, but rather the words she is required to spell. She gets 16 words a week that range from 4 to 5 letters long. Every Friday she has a spelling test on the words for that week. The words so far have focused on the combination sound of a consonant + r construction (br, cr, dr, fr, gr, pr, and tr). She has some difficulties with some of the combinations, but she is willing and ready to learn. We work hard on her words, and she is making some major improvements. It’s still an everyday thing when I have her.

When I do find time to pursue my own interests, I usually spend it trying to fill my manuscript with words. It might sound easy, but there is a lot involved in writing a novel. It takes some serious determination and an adamant refusal to throw in the towel. I will admit that I’ve been tempted to just give it up and say it wasn’t for me. I can’t do it, though. First of all, I love doing it way too much, and second of all, I want to know if my efforts will ever be good enough to find a publisher. So I’m sorry that my writing time has been spent writing fiction and not blogging. I hope to find a balance in the future.

If you haven’t guessed by now, I’m a word nerd. I love words, their origins, and uses. While doing some research for one of my current works in progress I ran into another word nerd’s explanation of the word parkour on a web forum. If you didn’t know I was word nerd, before, then you should definitely know that I am now that I have publicly admitted to reading a forum on word usage. I’m going to post that forum entry by Alissa J. Bratz in its entirety here.

*drags the thread up from the grave*
Live! Liiiiive!
*lightning bolts*
Okay, now that that drama is out of the way, I’m going to unveil my utter geekdom here, and share the reasons you can’t use parkour as a verb.
As stated, parkour is a noun. However, English turns nouns into verbs all the time. The process is called zero-conversion, zero-derivation (in the case of English), or verbification: when a language changes a word from one part of speech into a verb. For example, in English, "weird" is an adjective, but people often use it as a phrasal verb: "That guy totally weirded me out." Or email: "Send me an e-mail" vs. "E-mail me."
All languages engage in zero-conversion to a degree; English is particularly fond of verbification.
Given this, and English’s propensity towards zero-conversion to verbs, why can’t "parkour" be used as a verb?
Because le parkour is a French noun that has been borrowed from French. French does not zero-convert to verbs as readily as English does (although this is not always the case: verbs like "googliser"=to [look up on] Google, and the like crop up in French often enough. Worth noting is that "Google" itself is a borrowing into French, however it is a weak example as it is a proper noun for a product name, like Coca-Cola or Xerox, and is therefore generally unchanged language to language. Parkour is not a proper noun/brand name.)
All languages borrow from other languages as the need arises. "Need" is generally characterized by the introduction of a cultural element from one speech community to another, for which the receiving speech community has no equivalent. For instance, answer this question: What is the English translation for "burrito"?
In the case of parkour, no equivalent for parkour existed in English speech communities, so the name was imported along with the art form. This bond was further solidified by the application of "freerunning" as a possible English translation, and freerunning’s subsequent philosophical/applicational split from parkour proper. The split necessitated a linguistic distinction between the two disciplines, handily already present via the inital borrowing of "parkour" into English.
That "parkour" is a borrowed noun is significant, because English typically doesn’t zero-convert/verbify borrowed words. Support for this notion has already been given in previous posts with the examples "ballet" (also French), and "karate" (Japanese).
In French, the expression would be "faire du parkour"=to do parkour. French applies the verb "faire" (to do) to many, many physical activities. It’s simply a characteristic of the language:
faire du bateau=to go boating
faire de la planche a voile=to windsurf
faire du roller en ligne=to rollerblade
faire du ski=to ski (although skier is also used as a single verb)
faire du cheval/de l’equitation=to go horseback riding/to ride horses
…etc.
So since "parkour" is a noun, verbified in French by means of a "faire construction" ("to do" construction), borrowed into English, which typically resists zero-converting borrowed words, we have no other choice but to say "to do/practice parkour" in English.
It is conceivable that in the future, English will zero-convert parkour into a verb; but in general that will depend much on whether it gains wide acceptance among English speech communities (to me, personally, it just sounds wrong, but that may be because I also speak French).
It is unlikely that French will verbify "parkour" for two reasons: one, because it is already in wide use with a faire construction, and two, because the noun "parkour" itself derived from the French verb "parcourir,"=to run across or through. So the verb "parkourir" is already taken (phonetically); "parkourer" might take root, but it’s unlikely. The root verb is "courir"=to run; part of a specific verb class (-IR verbs like dormir), and although most verbification in French classifies verbs in the -ER verb class (the most common verb class), it is highly irregular/unlikely for a verb to "jump classes" like that.
So there you also have an actual linguistic explanation, and you probably also think I’m a huge nerd… which I am.
B.A., Linguistics, University of Wisconsin, 1998
*bows*

If you would like, you can read the entire forum here.

Bibliography

Alissa J. Bratz. (June 19, 2007). How to use the word parkour. In American Parkour Forums. Retrieved July 31, 2009, from http://www.americanparkour.com/smf/index.php?PHPSESSID=fb7f726327a07b5722893daeffcbbafc&topic=885.msg57802#msg57802.

–Jerry W. Stewart

Artist: Lady Sovereign
Album: Jigsaw
Song: Guitar