long live Fauxtionary!

Inner Preditor: That colossal ass residing in your brain who waits to ambush your next idea.

Critique Poup: What your manuscript looks like the day after those so helpful bi-weekly get togethers.

more fake words

Bitterary Agent: Your literary agent who does not phone you frequently to gush about your genius.

Rehersal of Fortune: Secretly writing your Caldecott acceptance speech. Boy Scouts say to be prepared.

ever more Fauxtionary

Immaterial Hurl: Your reaction to a review which failed to divine any meaning in your book whatsoever.

Substance Abuse: A review trying to hammer too much meaning into your book.

words, words, words

Slogma: Having to sit through a passionate speech by a writer with a large list of should’s and shouldn’ts about the craft.

Down the Brainpipe: A phrase to describe the complete waste of time, brainpower, energy and self-confidence from doggedly pursuing a failed idea, despite suspecting from the start that it was probably crap.

from the Fauxtionary

Poltergist: A potentially brilliant but evanescent main idea for a story that visits you at 3 in the morning and disappears at daybreak, although the whole perfect thing was all there in your head and kept you awake for more than 2 hours.

Netscaping: Incessant prowling the internet to check emails and Facebook rather than working on your book.

more Fauxtionary

Blandishment: Glaringly unecstatic response from your spouse upon reading your new manuscript.

Returnal Void: No ideas today either.

Fauxtionary two

Here is another installment of corrupted words or phrases that I've invented to help describe the creative journey.

Dolcrumbs: Cookie and potato chip bits wedged in your keyboard from a particularly nasty period of time with no fresh ideas.

Stalking The Plank: Hovering the internet searching for the first reviews of your new book.

Fauxtionary

I have wrestled with this subject before. Here, here and here. Words. There ain’t enough of them. Useful ones that is, for describing the agonies and excesses of the creative life. Particularly writing and illustrating children’s books.

In the past, I tried to resolve this insufficiency by cramming some Latin words together into something more serviceable. But I couldn’t remember them, so they really weren’t that serviceable.

This go around, I’ve decided to simply corrupt the Mother Tongue.

Forgoing further fuss, here are the first three words of my new Fauxtionary. My plan is to post a new one every Tuesday morning, but you know how uncooperative plans can be.

Fossil Fuel: Re-reading favorable reviews of your past books in an attempt to energise your confidence.

Hulapoop: Spinning round and around on a crappy idea you will never make work.

Karmakaze:  A reckless urge to follow up a commercial and/or critical success with an oblique, esoteric, self-indulgent binge of “pure art” that will show the whole world what you are really capable of.