Saturday Guest Blogger: Kathleen O’Reilly
I can’t exactly remember when I met Kathleen O’Reilly, though I’m pretty sure the connection was made through Julie Kenner, who is a mutual friend and fellow Blaze/Temptation writer. What I can tell you is that Kathleen is one of the nicest, funniest, most talented writers I know and I’m so thrilled to have her here in the jungle, talking about a topic near and dear to my heart. I love wordsmithing! And there are some lines in here that are just priceless…read carefully, jungle friends. Welcome, Kathleen!
Wordsmithery
By Kathleen O’Reilly
I have a love-affair with words, especially the wild and kinky ones. I like words that surprise me, that whisper in my ear, that crook a finger and say, “follow me…” My favorite authors are the clever ones that know how to use words, how to misuse them for best effect, and how to make me sigh with envy.
As a writer, words are the only tools we have. We must build a world with mere words, we must beget a whole pedigree of humans with our words, we must intrigue the reader using nothing more than the smallest of building blocks — words.
Yet words can be arranged and rearranged to great affectation, or affection, depending on which cunning-linguistical coterie you prefer. There are the classic stylists like Nabakov:
“I pushed her softness back into the room and went in after her. I ripped her shirt off. I unzipped the rest of her. I tore off her sandals. Wildly, I pursued the shadow of her infidelity; but the scent I traveled upon was so slight as to be practically undistinguishable from a madman’s fancy.”
There are the great bawds, like Shakespeare, who had ever so many word-tricks up his sleeve. “Oh, when she had written it (a letter), and was reading it over, she found ‘Benedick’ and ‘Beatrice’between the sheets.” Even the simplistic, “I am stuffed,” can assume a more insatiable meaning, if you mind wanders in those directions, as mine is wont to do.
The list of wordsmiths go on: Dickens, Twain, C. S. Lewis, Douglas Adams, Dorothy Parker, and oh, my, I’m being obtuse, how could I forget the great Dr. Seuss?
One of my favorite form of word-play is taking the expected and twisting it into the novel. We all expect: “Her skin was pale and silken, shimmering in the moonlight.” We do not expect, “Her skin was pearls dipped in moonlight,” or, if this is a paranormal, and the hero is a were-hog: “Her pale skin was pearls before swine.”
Cliches are especially rife for the mistaking. “Looking in the mirror, she examined her butt, and forty acres and a mole sadly stared back at her.” I could go on, ad infinitum, eternally, to infinity and beyond, but I only have a limited number of words handy.
When you choose the words to preen your scene, there are mean words that will lash at you, wrenching you out of your comfort zone, squeezing your mind until it explodes, charging and pummeling, pummeling and charging, thrusting and driving until you cry out for relief.
And if angry-words are not your cuppa, there are pretty words that sing out on the muted page, honeyed words that slowly fall from the writer’s imagination, dripping with a soothing rhythm, floating just beyond the tried and true, leaving the reader breathless, poised with anticipation, awaiting that next….small…set of letters.
I love words, all of them, the good, the bad, and the ugly. I have the Describer’s Dictionary, Descriptive Word Finder, Zounds!, Swearing, the Synonym Finder, Roget’s Thesaurus, sexicon, and the Dictionary of Allusions at my fingertips because my brain can be lazy without the proper stimulus (usually Red Bull). I am a mere lexiconologist in training, but my current favorite sexy, lexiconologist is Stephen Colbert. On that note, I’ll leave you with this:
Julie here again: In case you haven’t noticed, Kathleen has a new Blaze out this month…if you click the cover of Nightcap, you’ll go to Amazon where you can buy your very own copy! Her books consistently get awesome reviews from some of the toughest review sites. And I think she rocks…so go out and buy a copy for yourself, if you haven’t already!
Welcome to the jungle, Ms. O’Reilly,
Thank you for reminding me how important a writer’s work really is. It’s true, all we have are words to transport our readers to another place and time. We don’t have a camera, or paints, or paper or pastels, all we have are words. Choosing the right ones is what its all about. Thanks again for being here.
No comment on the video.
Cher
Comment by Cher — May 3, 2008 @ 8:18 am
This is such a great topic…I love words! And Dr. Seuss!
I just got the “Rodale Synonym Finder”- over 1,000,000 synonyms - and spent 20 minutes the other night looking for a word to replace “sensual.” I ended up replacing the whole sentence but that’s okay because it was soooo much better when I finished and it all came about because one word triggered another word, triggered another word…
I often spend time analyzing songs because they don’t have pages and pages to convey a message. They have minutes and every single word in a song has to be the perfect one.
And I actually snarfed once during the video…not because of the subject but because of the words (and the “yeah” that came out of Spikoli). Thanks for being here!!!
Have a great day everyone!
Comment by Jodie — May 3, 2008 @ 9:28 am
Cher, I think it amazes me how much power can be in words, because where a painting is perceived by the eyes, where music is perceived by the ears, words go directly to the brain and the imagination. It’s just cool.
I don’t watch the Colbert show for the politics, I watch it for the writing. I think his writers are the best wordsmiths out today. I think Stephen Colbert must be a really intelligent guy as well, because when the writer’s strike was going on, his show was still one of the best and I assumed he was doing it all on his own.
Comment by Kathleen O'Reilly — May 3, 2008 @ 9:36 am
Welcome, I loved “Sex, Straight Up”. Awesome. I had to get the others!
Comment by katie — May 3, 2008 @ 10:11 am
Kathleen, welcome to the jungle…I loved your blog…I too am a lover of words and the worlds that they create…the best authors are those who choose and use their words wisely to create an air of mystique, pulling you into the depths of a character’s world, making it your own…you have a great gift…even though your blog wasn’t a novel, I was sucked in nonetheless…if I feel this way about your blog, I can imagine how I will feel about your books…I haven’t had the pleasure of reading one yet, but I will certainly be on the lookout for the next one…
The vid was very funny to me…Sean Penn gets better and better with age, I must say…he is starting to look distinguished…lol
Jules, thank you for inviting Kathleen to the jungle…I hope that everyone is having a wonderful weekend so far…it is raining here, perfect time to get lost in a book…ttyl
Peace and love,
Paula R.
Comment by Paula R. — May 3, 2008 @ 10:13 am
Thank you, Katie. Can I say, I really like you???
Comment by Kathleen O'Reilly — May 3, 2008 @ 10:50 am
Jodie, I could not LIVE without my Rodale Synonym Finder! I love how the word led you to recast the sentence…that’s the real art of wordsmithing, I think! Your song exercise reminded me of my poetry class in college. I was a creative writing major, in fiction, but I had to take poetry. I had NO talent in poetry. NONE. NADA. However, my professor told me early on to use the class as a means to improve my prose and having that outlook made the class perhaps the MOST VALUABLE one I took in my entire course of study. Like songs, poetry only have so much space and so many words to say what needs to be say. Powerful lessons in there, that’s for sure.
Kathleen, the vid clip was hilarious…and I’m not exactly on that political side at all! Like you, I appreciate the words…I found the poet laureate absolutely hilarious.
Hey, Paula! Am I the luckiest woman in the world to know such talented authors like Kathleen or what?
Comment by Julie Leto — May 3, 2008 @ 10:57 am
Paula,
If you really enjoy words, there’s this great listserv, Michael Quinion. Serendipitously, I got his weekly email this morning, and today we learn that the word for the paragraph sign is pilcrow, and it also traces the usage and definition of the phrase “Hairy at the heel,” (ill-bred), which traces it roots to horse-racing, and then the phrase “chickens come home to roost” which dates back to 1930 when Chaucer wrote, “curses are like a bird that returns to its own nest.” Fowly enough, chickens came on the scene in 1855.
It’s the funnest thing if you’re into words. http://www.wordwidewords.org/maillist/index.htm
Kathleen
Comment by Kathleen O'Reilly — May 3, 2008 @ 10:58 am
I love your books and am always happy to see a new one out, but this: “Her pale skin was pearls before swine.” had me dying laughing. Thank you so much, I think you’ve just made my whole weekend. I’m going to be giggling at random moments and my kids will think I’ve gone ’round that bend.
Thank you,
Helen
Comment by HelenK — May 3, 2008 @ 11:01 am
Paula,
I’m going to try this again, my last post got et. If you love weird words, (and honestly, who doesn’t?), you must subscribe to Michael Quinion’s World Wide Words listserv. It’s a free weekly email about word and phrase origins and interesting words. Serendipitously, in today’s email, he covers the pilcrow, which, I bet no one knew this, is the name for the paragraph mark. Did you know the paragraph mark had a proper name? I confess, I did not. And then he goes into the phrase “hairy at the heel,” an obscure British phrase for ill-bred. Who knew?
Anyway, to subscribe go to, http://www.worldwidewords.org/maillist/index.htm
It’s great to see so many fellow word-lovers here.
Kathleen
Comment by Kathleen O'Reilly — May 3, 2008 @ 11:29 am
Hey, Kathleen…it wasn’t “et” but it was in moderation. I have no idea why some messages go in there and others do not, but I’ll keep checking throughout the day and try to release any that get caught up in our spam filter.
Did anyone else get “cunning-linguistical” from Kathleen’s post or it is just me and my gutter mind?
Back when I was teaching Shakespeare (one of the things I miss from teaching, actually) I taught in Catholic school. I wasn’t exactly supposed to explain all the bawdy passages to my students, but damn, they’re half the fun. So I came up with a little hand signal (a swooping down gesture) that meant “think in the gutter.” Invariably, half the class would start to laugh and the other half would beg for explanation from their peers, which I’d give them a moment to do in appropriate whispers. By the end of the comedies like Midsummer Night or Shrew, they were all laughing and making the gestures themselves. It was hilarious. Then after me, they got the REAL Shakespeare teacher (my boss) and she did even more. English was a very popular subject at my school.
Comment by Julie Leto — May 3, 2008 @ 11:43 am
Julie,
Apologies for the repeat. Technology can be a gift or a curse, depending on if it works the way we want it to. And can I be the first to say that I would have LOVED to have you for a Shakespeare teacher? I don’t know why they don’t teach that side of Shakespeare in school because he would be like, the most popular writer EVER. Oh, yeah, I guess he is. But, I think the kids would like him more. There’s a couple of books that I ordered on Bawdy Shakespeare because honestly, I had no idea he was that much the dirty old man. It makes me like him all the more.
Comment by Kathleen O'Reilly — May 3, 2008 @ 11:49 am
The trouble with most high school curriculums…
…is that they focus on the tragedies and histories. Romeo & Juliet, Julius Caesar, Richard III, Macbeth…and leave out the COMEDIES as if they are less brilliant, when in fact, they are the most brilliant of all his works, IMO.
I had to teach R&J first … it’s like tradition. Luckily, between the Nurse and Mercutio, there was a lot of comic relief. By the time I did Midsummer Night’s Dream, my students were really used to the language and could figure stuff out for themselves.
BTW, I wasn’t “supposed” to teach Midsummer. It wasn’t in the curriculum. But I figured out that I could pretty much teach the whole curriculum in about 2/3 of the school year and still have 1/3 left to do what I wanted. This didn’t go over well in public school (hence my one year as a public school teacher as opposed to 7 in Catholic school) but the Catholic schools were much more lax. We wrote our own exams and never had to “teach to the test” like public schools do.
Because of this, my students always got two Shakespeare plays, read practically the complete works of Poe and did authors like Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton and Emily Dickinson in greater depth because, I mean…how many dead white guys really belong in a high school curriculum?
Part of me really misses that…the other part remembers dealing with parents and administrators and is very glad I’m not writing books full time!
Comment by Julie Leto — May 3, 2008 @ 12:04 pm
I had a little soapbox icon…I don’t know why he’s not showing up! Damn…I don’t get to use him often!
Comment by Julie Leto — May 3, 2008 @ 12:06 pm
Welcome Kathleen! I love words and must go buy some of the books you listed. I agree that it would have been fun to have Julie teaching Shakespeare. Off to subscribe to Michael Quinion’s weekly email.
Comment by Liza — May 3, 2008 @ 3:59 pm
Kathleen,
I just finished reading Nightcap and it was great. I really love the O’Sullivan brothers and after reading Sean’s story I can’t help but hope they have another long lost brother some where. I didn’t want the series to end!
Comment by Carol R — May 3, 2008 @ 4:13 pm
Kathleen — Just had to stop in real quick to tell you that you are an AWESOME wordsmith!!! I read an excerpt somewhere for your Blaze, SEX, STRAIGHT UP, and it intriged me enough for me to go out and buy it. I read the book straight through and LOVED Daniel’s story and your lyrical way with words. I just picked up NIGHTCAP at B&N, and ordered SHAKEN AND STIRRED from Amazon. You’re my new favorite author!
Comment by Janelle — May 3, 2008 @ 4:24 pm
Julie, I’m sorry about the soapbox icon. We’ll all have to visualize
Carol, thank you so much. By the time I get done with the trilogies, I’m ready to be done, but then, after the pain fades (sorta like childbirth ), then I read over the galleys and I’m happy again. I don’t have a trilogy next year, three standalone Blazes, but I’m thinking of pulling in a primary from the Red Choo Diaries as a secondary character, because it’s fits, and it’ d kinda be fun. So, that’s the long answer for… maybe. And I def eventually want to do some books with Cain, so the bar and the brothers would be back, at least in the background.
Comment by Kathleen O'Reilly — May 3, 2008 @ 4:26 pm
Pardon the typos. THIS is why copy-editors stay in business.
Comment by Kathleen O'Reilly — May 3, 2008 @ 4:28 pm
Great post!
Comment by Estella — May 3, 2008 @ 4:30 pm
Janelle, you are my new favorite person!!!!!
Comment by Kathleen O'Reilly — May 3, 2008 @ 4:37 pm
love stepehn colbert. hi kathleen, good to see u here. love the blazes.
Comment by kim h — May 3, 2008 @ 6:37 pm
Hello Kathleen, Welcome to the Jungle. I know that on the east coast the day is mostly over but I’m on the west coast & just had the chance to visit so I could see today’s guest. I’ve read your books as I am a Blaze customer! The O’Sullivans are waiting for me to read. I wanted to wait until I had them all. I love connected books & I tend to want them all together!!
Thanks for your “wordsmithing”. I’m not a writer have no talent but am an avid reader that appreciates all the talented authors on my “favorite” list. Blogs have taught me how much you all work to give us that wonderful reading.
The video was funny!!
Everyone enjoy the rest of the weekend.
Comment by Donna M — May 3, 2008 @ 7:39 pm
Loved this feature on wordsmithing! Where would we be without the right words to describe
all actions? Thanks for blogging with us today!!
Pat Cochran
Comment by Pat Cochran — May 3, 2008 @ 8:58 pm
Kathleen, thank you for the link…I will definitely check it out…I am a poet, and it is always interesting to see what certain phrases mean and such…once again thank you for visiting us in the jungle today, as a “teacher” of sorts…I see your name as a regular jungle bunny sometimes too…
Jules, you are soooooo lucky to know such awesome authors…I didn’t know you taught Shakespeare….it was one of my fav college seminars…your class must have been a lot of fun….btw, I caught the cunning-linguisical coterie phrase…I thought it was funny…
Peace and love,
Paula R.
Comment by Paula R. — May 3, 2008 @ 10:06 pm
Julie - why couldn’t I have had you for my English teacher?! The only one I really remember was oh so serious. I think I did okay in English - I don’t remember having to change that grade on my report card like I did my math grades - but I just don’t remember much from my English classes.
Comment by Jodie — May 3, 2008 @ 10:14 pm
Jodie, that sounds like me with Algebra! “No, ma, that’s really a B. No, that little center line isn’t drawn in.” LOL!
I taught high school English…9th, 11th (my favorite) and 12th grades. Of course 11th grade in Florida is American Lit, so no Shakespeare for them…but we did do a lot of Poe.
He had no sense of humor, but he was sufficiently creepy. For comedy, we at least had Mark Twain.
Comment by Julie Leto — May 3, 2008 @ 11:10 pm
Thank you for being the guest blogger. You wrote a delightful blog.
I, also, love a good ‘turn of phrase’. I also have an affinity for good punctuation. Commas are fun!
I’m almost afraid to reply to your blog for fear of sounding trite. :-)
Comment by ThatBrunette — May 4, 2008 @ 1:16 am
Comment by Jodie — May 4, 2008 @ 9:56 am