Category Archives: #ReaderFriday

Reader Friday-Feeling A Bit Contrary?

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Maybe I’m just an information-stunted writer, but here’s a new word for me. Maybe for you, too?

Contronym.

(BTW, it was new to the dictionary here at TKZ, too . . . I had to add it.) But I digress.

Fun, huh?

What’s a contronym, you ask. It’s those words common to the English language that “can have opposite or contradictory meanings”. I found a website with a list of 75 contronyms. And there’s a slew of other websites you can check out if you’re feeling a bit contradictory this beautiful Friday.

I took the liberty of downloading this quick list for you, just to give you an idea of how these words “work”. (I hope you can read it.)

One of the cautions noted on this website is that, as an author, if we use one of these special words in our writing we must be clear in the context which meaning should be applied. It could get a bit confusing, right?

For instance, consider the word “aught”. If your character slams his fist down on the desk and yells, “Aught was paid!” the reader will deduce nothing was paid. Without the slamming and yelling or other contextual details, your reader won’t know if all was paid or nothing was paid.

TKZers, have you ever heard of contronyms? And can you come up with your own? (Maybe after your second or third cuppa joe?)

 

Reader Friday-Happy Author’s Day!

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I want this room in my house…

Who knew?

Apparently lots of folks! Here’s the link I found to Author’s Day when I did a search on “weird holidays”.

Straight from the website:

“November 1 is Author’s Day, a day to honor all your favorite authors and to encourage any writers in your life to keep working on their magnum opus.

Who will you encourage?

Writing is hard and writing a short story or a book is even harder. So thank your favorite authors for writing your favorite books and help budding writers and authors around you in any way you can so that they can achieve their dreams.”

Okay, TKZers, how will you celebrate today?

I’ll start by thanking each and every one of you who have taught, encouraged, and entertained me in my author/reader journey.

Over to y’all!

 

 

 

 

Reader Friday-All Hallows’ Eve

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I think I may have gone to school with him…

Halloween is one of those traditions that it seems anything goes. Some celebrate it, some don’t. Some see it as a religious holiday, and others think of it as just a time to have fun and eat lots of candy.

For Hollywood and retailers alike, it’s become a barn-burner of raking in the dough.

The one thing we can all agree on, though, is that it has some scary overtones.

So–let’s share some scary with each other.

What, in your opinion, is the scariest story ever? Can be movie, novel, short story, or maybe even a poem.

For me, it’s this one:

Never have liked clowns since watching IT, written by Stephen King…

 

Okay, TKZers, scare us with your scariest story ever…

 

Reader Friday-Cast Away!

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If you’ve seen Cast Away starring the mega-talented actor, Tom Hanks, you have a Hollywood-ese thumbnail portrait of what it’d be like to be stranded on a deserted island with Wilson. Yeah, you got it . . . a volleyball.

Wilson

But, how many times have we been asked who in all the world we’d like to be stranded with–meaning a person, of course. Answers we’ve given (or received) range from Moses to Einstein to Betty Grable and everyone in between.

 

Today, I’d like to flip that question around–just for fun. That’s what Fridays are all about here at TKZ, right?

 

Drum roll, please!

Who is the one person you would NOT want to be stranded with, not for all the tea in anywhere?

I’ll start. And maybe I’m cheating a bit, but here goes:

No one who has politician listed on his or her resume` . . . no way, no how. I’d rather be with a volleyball.

Did I steal anyone’s thunder? #sorrynotsorry…

Your turn!

 

Reader Friday-Old Words, New Meanings

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Another word bounce happening here! Elaine bounced off my pet peeve post, now I’m bouncing off hers from yesterday. This is fun, yes?

I took a trip recently. I bet you’ve taken the same one. The one where you start from your search bar, intent on research into a monumentally important topic, and you end up somewhere you’ve never been.

Enter…if you dare… The Cynic’s Dictionary. One of the funniest dictionaries I’ve ever come across. I unearthed a version of this, so some of the word definitions are slightly different than what you’ll see on the website.

On the other side of this post, please tell us your favorites, or make up your own.

Here goes:

ABDICATE: To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

BALDERDASH: A rapidly receding hairline.
CANNIBAL: Someone who is fed up with people.
CONSCIOUSNESS: that annoying time between naps.
INFLATION: Cutting money in half without damaging the paper.

 

 

Okay, let’s have some fun! Make up your own, or pull some from the website above…  🙂

Reader Friday-Skeletons in the Closet

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Yep, we’ve all got ’em! Care to share? Not that we have to drag out anything we don’t want to, but I think it’s safe to say that some of our skeletons have morphed into comedians over the years.

Let’s share some of the funny stuff and not get too Grim Reaperish, okay?

I’ll start. Maybe you’ll get a kick out of this.

Once when I was a kid, about so tall, we were visiting my grandparents along with our four cousins. That makes six adults and eight kids. The grown-ups chased us outside so they could play pinochle.

We went down the hillside, stretched out in a line holding hands-with my little sister at the end. And my eldest cousin touching the hot wire on the electric fence.

Of course, she snitched on us and boy, howdy, did the 7 of us get in trouble for that! At the time I felt guilty, sort of, but now it’s just a funny story of growing up in a small town.

Okay…your turn, TKZers…let’s hear those bones rattle a bit! And, do tell if one of your characters has a delicious skeleton in the closet…

***

You think Annie Lee, happily married mother of four, has no skeletons in her closet? Think again . . .

 

 

Reader Friday-Let’s Pet Our Peeves!

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Everyone born on planet earth develops peeves, right? And the *older* we get, the more peeves we’ve got IMHO. At least it seems to be true with me. I don’t want it to be true . . . it seems like the older we get, we should let loose of some, right? Hmm…

So, without further ado, let’s share some of ours . . .

Because I live in apple and cherry farm country, one of my pet peeves is orchard guns. What are those, ask the uninitiated?

Orchard farmers have to deal with birds, birds, and more birds snacking on developing fruit. Some orchardists use mechanical predator bird noises; some use fluttering ribbons and flags; some use netting over the entire orchard, both to keep birds out and to control how much sun the fruit receives.

Others use . . . you guessed it . . . gun noises. Big gun noises! Like cannons and high-powered rifle big noises.

Mom, make it stop…!

 

The problem isn’t with us, though. It’s our German shepherd, Hoka. See those ears? Not much gets by them…

She’s deathly afraid of any gunshots out here in red-neck country. And for 6-8 weeks, she tries to hide from the orchard guns. She won’t go outside by herself, she tries to hide in the bathtub (picture that!), or crawl under our bed.

At least there is an end in sight, though, come harvest time…

 

 

So, now that I’ve shared one of my pet peeves, it’s your turn, TKZers! What’s one of yours, and do any of your characters pet a peeve once in awhile?

 

Reader Friday-Words From Down Under

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I ran across this on social media and was fascinated. (Guess it’s good for something, right?)

Perhaps you’ve heard of this, but I hadn’t.

A Kangaroo Word is a word/synonym within a word (my definition). For instance, the word chicken. Chicken contains a synonym for itself-cHickEN. That’s part of the definition, as you can see from the graphic taken from the website I explored. I might add also that the letters of the synonym within the word must be in order, but they need not be grouped together.

Other kangaroo words are:  MAscuLinE, BLOssOM, and hoNOuraBLE.

Fun, huh? Go here to find more:

List of kangaroo words

I tried to come up with my own, and so far, I’ve come up with PUPpy.

TKZers, maybe you can jazz us with a few of your own! Let’s have some fun…

Reader Friday-The Games We Played

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Simple question today:

What was your favorite childhood game, either inside or outside, in school or away from school, with friends or alone? No rules here . . . just your favorite game you played as a child.

Mine? I have two: Kick the can in the middle of our quiet street usually with about 10-15 of the neighborhood kids.

And the board game, Risk, played with my brother and his friend who lived next door to us. We’d set the game up in the neighbor’s basement during the summer, leave it set up, and played every day almost. And let me tell you, the bro and our neighbor were merciless Risk players…never cut me any slack a ‘tall!

I never won, but boy howdy, it was a fun game. Until a few years ago, I had our original game–at least 50 years old–buried in a closet. Once when my brother was visiting, I presented him with it. It was a good moment for both of us.

Over to you, TKZ peeps! What was your go-to game when you were young? And, what games do your characters play?

 

Reader Friday-The “What If?” Zone

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(Title of today’s post courtesy of my husband…a man of few words.)   🙂

Familiar territory, right? I’m betting the farm (if I had one) that all of us have played the “What If?” game with ourselves, and possibly with others. Which brings up a cool idea. “What If” a group of writers got together and designed a game just for folks like us who spend their days dreaming up ways to get in trouble . . . ahem . . . I mean, to get our characters in trouble. Wouldn’t that be fun?

But I digress.

The subject today is a riff off of a recent Randy Ingermanson article. The point of his post was the “What If?” question, but with a good, wrenching twist to it.

He states: “Most novels use a familiar ‘what if?’ question that has been asked and answered many times before. But the really ground-breaking novels ask a ‘what if?’ question that is new.”

He goes on to say that not all “what if?” questions have to be new and shiny, but to up our author game we should “Ask The Question Nobody Is Asking”. Intriguing, yes?

 

He mentions the Wright Brothers, who, back in 1903 asked the one no one else was asking. How do we get a machine to fly that’s heavier than air? And away they went, soaring into the history books!

 

I thought of one as I was writing this post: What if I walked into my house and it wasn’t mine?

So let’s play.

TKZers, will you brainstorm over your coffee, tea, or water this morning and think up a “what if” question that maybe hasn’t been asked yet? And if you’ve already asked that unasked-as-yet question and made a story out of it, that’s okay too.

Do tell…