Jerry W Stewart

It’s been a while, but I’m back. I’ve had a lot of new things going on my life that are both exciting and equally exhausting.  A few things (like this blog) have suffered some neglect to make way for all my new endeavors, but I’m struggling to find a balance between the old and new. For starters, I’m going to make an attempt to guide this blog out of the wastelands of neglect and back to the fertile plains of creativity and useless information about myself.

I’m not sure exactly what I had going on in the past. Most of my attempts to create anything reoccurring where half-hearted at best, so I’m not going to make any promises to revive those. If I look back and find something worth reviving I may do so, but for now, I don’t have any plans to. All the changes and fresh starts in my life has inspired my to give this blog a (mostly) fresh start, as well.

I’m sure you are all dying to know what changes I’m talking about, and I promise I will tell you all about them in the coming posts. For now, I’m out of time, so check back tomorrow to see what changes I’ve made. Until then, I would love to hear about the exciting things that have happened to you in your life, so post them in the comments.

~~ Jerry W. Stewart

Another year has come and gone. I’m older and not much wiser. But, at least I know that I have friends and family that care enough about me to take time out of their busy schedules to remind me of it all and celebrate the passing of another year of my life.

All joking aside, I really do thank everyone for the Birthday wishes. It has truly been a reminder to me just how blessed and how loved I am. I’ve gotten well-wishes from family, friends, co-workers, and even one of my favorite authors (Rachel Caine) via Twitter. (By the way, Rachel and I share the same birthday. How cool is that?)

My daughters called me this morning from their mother’s house to sing the Happy Birthday Song to me over the phone, and they called a local radio station to wish me a happy birthday over the radio waves. My Facebook page is piling up with “Happy Birthdays”, and my phone hasn’t stopped dinging all morning. Holly, my beautiful wife, got me 3 books by Noah Lukeman. They are all excellent books about the writing process. If you’re interested check them out at Amazon:

• The First Five Pages: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile
• A Dash of Style: The Art and Mastery of Punctuation
• The Plot Thickens: 8 Ways to Bring Fiction to Life

I can’t wait to get them in the mail either today or tomorrow, but enough about books…at least in this post. This post is for everyone who has helped me celebrate the last Birthday of my twenties.  The next one will ring in another decade, and I’m not sure how I feel about that, yet, so let’s make this one count.

My Nanny Linda and Alexis, my youngest daughter, have planned a birthday lunch at one of my favorite restaurants, Fuji’s Japanese Steak. In about an hour I’m going to be sitting down with family and eating some sushi, house fried rice with loads of Yum Yum sauce, and filet mignon. My stomach’s growling just thinking about it.

I’ve also received cards (you know what can usually be found in those cards $$$), from family and friends, too. I don’t want to leave you out when sending my thanks. Some of us are separated by distance, and I hope to see you all soon. Thank you for remembering me, today, and thank you for my gifts.

Thanks again to everyone who has helped make this a birthday to remember

~~ Jerry W. 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

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