A.J. Maguire

Tag: life

  • Burnt/Burned, Learnt/Learned

    To be entirely transparent, this post is for my mental health. I am a socially anxious person, so social media is a special sort of torture for me and I may have opened a weird can of worms yesterday.

    Let me paint the scene, because context matters.

    Halfway through my cup of coffee yesterday, I was reviewing changes MS Word suggested for my manuscript when I happened upon the word burnt.

    It had a blue line beneath it, saying something was up, so I clicked on it and in the margin of the screen Word explained that, in the context of the sentence with which I was using that word, burnt was the UK spelling whereas the American spelling would be burned.

    Now, it is important to note that MS Word has done me dirty a time or two, so I zipped over to ye olde Merriam-Webster and, lo and behold, it affirmed that burnt and burned were used interchangeably as the past participle of burn in the UK.

    Here’s the link for you. It’s honestly a little cheeky and I enjoyed this foray into language. LINK.

    There are many, many, MANY more resources out there where the conversation delves deeper into the use of these words, but suffice to say, that is as far as I went on my half-cup-of-coffee brain power before slipping over to social media.

    Here is the post I made on Threads –

    Things I learned today… Burnt is the UK spelling of burned. Why do I like ‘burnt’ better? It just feels more aggressive to me and I like it.

    Now, should I have added context? Yes.

    The post was too vague and generalized the spelling of the word without explaining that it was being used to describe something as having been ‘burnt/burned’ into wood.

    While my research stands and several lovely UK individuals affirmed that they do use burnt/burned interchangeably and went so far as to introduce me to learnt/learned, and spelt/spelled, the discussion did not end there.

    200+ comments later and I was thrown into heights of social anxiety I had heretofore never experienced.

    The majority of the conversation was pleasant and I appreciate all the commentary. I feel like I’ve grown as an author because of them, and I’ve found a few new authors to follow and whose books are now on my wish list.

    Long story short, and without highlighting the less-than-pleasant commenters too much, context matters and I’ll be certain to include it next time.

    I still prefer burnt to burned, but that’s no surprise because I also prefer grey to gray.

    Happy writing, everyone.

  • Settings and Mood Boards

    I learned a new trick and it seems to be seriously helping me with descriptions of the setting in particular, so naturally I’m going to share it here in case it helps someone else with their writing. Settings are often a struggle for me. I have read books on writing and gone to classes on writing and they always give this detailed list of the things you should know about your settings, and to be frank… these make my eyes gloss over.

    I’m not saying you don’t need to know that there are pock marks in the western wall where your character’s father once practiced knife throwing, I’m saying that making a list of these things was not helpful for me. And I’m saying that making such lists turned out to be a waste of my time because they rarely got looked at beyond the initial effort it took to make them.

    If these sorts of things work for you, then I applaud you and I am so glad. Seriously. Whatever works for you to get words on the page is what you should do.

    So what’s my trick?

    Images.

    Literal images.

    Deviantart and Pinterest are two places you can go to see some seriously beautiful artwork. This does come with the warning that oftentimes you’ll start browsing and before you know it, an hour has past, so make sure you go in with an idea of what you’re looking for.

    Now, for this next part, make sure you are looking at FREE images or that you’re not yanking someone’s hard work without somehow paying for it. Artists spend just as long on their craft as we writers do ours, so be respectful.

    What I do, is I start a Mood Board on Canva.

    I do love Canva. You can have a free account and do a lot with it. A lot of my marketing images and things come from Canva.

    Anyway, I start a Mood Board on Canva. They even have Mood Board templates you can use.

    Using the images that I stumbled across in my DeviantArt/Pinterest dungeon crawl (with permission if they are not free) I then fill that Mood Board. OR, I use MidJourney to help me create some images.

    Yes, Midjourney is an AI art generator. Yes, I understand there is a huge debate going on about AI in the arts. No, I’m not going to expound on this debate. Suffice to say, budgets are tight and if I could hire a flesh and blood artist to do some of these then I most certainly would. These images are for my personal use as I write/edit my drafts and I have found them supremely helpful.

    I digress.

    Here you can see a Mood Board that was made for a setting in Nora and the Winter King. Notice that I’ve paid particular attention to specific rooms, and that there is a distinct feel that all of the rooms follow. Identifying what is working for this setting is important. In this case, it’s a lot of stonework, a dusty and neglected feel while still be cozy in places.

    Oftentimes the very act of creating this mood board is enough to settle me into the scene I’m about to write, but having it on hand to reference as I go through the draft is helpful. Especially if I’m coming back to a setting that was left behind or returning to the work to begin edits.

    Anyway, that’s my trick. It seems to work better than making lists, at least for me, and it allows me to sort of “sit” in that setting and feel it.

    Happy writing, everyone!

  • From Coast to Coast – With Cats

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    Pest telling me how awful I am.

    All right, so admittedly Idaho isn’t exactly on the coast, but it is close enough to the west coast that my move to Massachusetts was significant.

    I suppose any move across state lines is significant but I’m sure you gather my meaning here. We spent 40 hours on the road, not counting pit stops and the necessary Motel stays.

    I must take a moment to give my husband a shout of appreciation for doing all the driving. I’m 97% sure I would have had a heart attack trying to pull the UHaul on my own.

    So! 40 hours on the road with one 10-year-old (who slept a great deal of the trip) and two very unimpressed cats. What could possibly go wrong?

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    Nuisance hiding under the dinosaur’s butt.

    Well, let’s go ahead and start with the obvious – Cats don’t like cars.

    Like, at all.

    My cat in particular (aptly named Pest) chose to pee on me before we even left my home town of Boise. Granted, I realize this was a direct reaction to never having traveled further than the vet’s office in his 9 years of living, but it was a sad portent of things to come.

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    He is plotting my demise. I can feel it.

    Pest spent the first hour and half of every day crying.

    Every morning. No matter how early we chose to rise and get started, and we were getting up at 4AM to avoid traffic in the more populated cities.

    After that first hour and a half, either because he ran out of kitty-voice to expound his displeasure or because he got used to the whole moving car thing, he quieted down and hid under my son’s feet to sleep.

    We also had a big fluffy dinosaur thing that I put in the back seat for the kiddo to sleep on, but the cats decided that was a perfect-most-wonderful-spot to sleep UNDER. Not on top of, but UNDERNEATH, hidden from view, thus keeping the kiddo from being able to really use it.

    The other kitty (named Nuisance or Funny Face or whatever the kiddo decides for the

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    “I am ninja kitty!”

    day) did much better. He didn’t cry or pee in the car at all.

    Nooooo, not that cat.

    Instead, Nuisance chose to find any hiding spot he could in the hotel rooms, leading us on a frantic hunt up and down the halls of the third hotel. (He was under one of the beds, pressed so tight against the foot board we couldn’t see him.)

    Beyond the upset kitties, there are a couple of issues to take note of;

    #1) The lady in Utah going 40MPH in a 70MPH zone. She really, really, really needs her license taken away. Or some loving family member to drive her around.

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    …. Wyoming.

    #2) Wyoming is full of nothing. SO MUCH NOTHING. Nebraska is a close second, but unless a cataclysm happens and the landscape cracks open or something, Wyoming will forever hold the title of Most Boring To Drive Through.

    #3) The Motel 6 on the edge of Wyoming gave us a room that was already rented, leading to a super awkward moment. Also, that motel is so close to the train tracks there is really no sleep to be had there. Every twenty or thirty minutes there was a train rumbling by right outside the window.

    #4) Omaha is the gateway to Hades. Or at least their roads look like it and I’m really surprised we made it out of there with our souls intact.

    And there we have it. Suffice to say, the trip wasn’t awful.  Brendon and I did have some fun, we got through the first three Naomi Novik Temeraire audio books, and once the landscape turned there were interesting things to look at.

    That being said, I’m glad we made it safely and look forward to more adventures in New England.

  • For want of a compliment …

    It’s amazing what a compliment can do. I went to the post office on Friday to deliver the books for the Goodreads Sweepstakes winners – Hurray! I hope the winners enjoy their copies! – and found myself standing in a line. (I know, big surprise there, right?) Anyway, as I was standing there, this lady got in line behind me. She seemed … well … angry. And considering the length of the line, I couldn’t really blame her.

    Some older people up in front of the line were talking about the “good old days” when Truman was running amok, and I eavesdropped for a bit before the two were helped and left. Finally, after ten minutes of ho-hum-drum-silence, I turned to the angry lady behind me and told her I liked the color of her sweatshirt. (It was robin’s egg blue, by the way.)

    In five seconds flat, the angry demeanor and unsociable attitude melted away from this woman and she smiled at me. For the rest of the wait, we talked about listening to those older people talk about Truman and discussed just how interesting it was to hear the way things used to be. (For the record, I am not old enough to remember Truman, but I do know who he was.)

    The wait was enjoyable when conversation was finally started, and all it took was a little compliment. This got me to thinking – what if everyone, everywhere, found something nice to say about whoever was standing behind them in a line, or sitting beside them on the bus or … you get it. As a society, we seem to be horrified at the prospect of talking to strangers. I mean, it’s one of the first things we’re taught as children; “Don’t talk to strangers!”

    But there comes a point where we all grow up and realize the persons surrounding us aren’t all serial killers and potential rapists; we shouldn’t be so terrified that we can’t give someone a small compliment.

    And good heavens! What is so wrong about smiling at someone as you pass them?

    Because of the post office lady, I decided to try another experiment … I walked down the sidewalk and smiled at everyone who walked by me. All but three people smiled back. One actually said; “Good afternoon.” Granted, I might have looked like a grinning lunatic to some of them, but I promise I am fairly harmless looking.

    This experiment left me feeling rather sad. I’ve decided to blame the unsociable attitude and general lack of response to the fact that it was finals week. Finals can make everyone unsociable. I’ll try again in a week or two.