Dictionary.com is My Favourite Website

30 Days of Development: Lindsay is writing every day for thirty days, and submitting every day for thirty days, and blogging about it every day for thirty days. Whew! Can she do it? Stay posted….

DAY NINE

Writing: Outline for non-verbal conformist play. Pretty good considering I was very…. very….. sleepy today…..

Thoughts: zzzzzzzzz – what? Oh, right. No sleeping on the blog. Not a lot of creative juice today. Having said that, I was able to pretty much outline the short non-verbal play I’ve got in mind. Pretty exciting…. if I wasn’t five seconds from falling into a coma. zzzzzzzzzzz – what?

Yesterday I spent a good deal of time coming up with character names for this play. I love creating names (re: obsessive). I want them to perfectly fit the character, sometimes I want them to say something, sometimes the thing they are saying is so obscure no one would ever figure it out but me, sometimes from the time I came up with the name to the time the play is finished I’ve completely forgotten the genesis for the name. And then someone asks me what the character name means. And then I have to make it up.

Dictionary.com (and it’s handy dandy one click link to Thesaurus.com) is a big part of my writing life. I love knowing exactly what words mean, what other words I can use. If I want a character to have a specific vocabulary, I can usually find anything I need at the click of a mouse. If I’m working with a specific theme, my first stop is always the dictionary and the thesaurus to further figure out the meaning of the word. You’d think words are important to me or something….

For my NVCP (non verbal conformist play) I knew I wanted whacked out non realistic names, as the play is not going to be realistic at all. So based on who the characters were and what their main characteristics are, that’s how I came up with their name. I started by looking up the meanings of the words that define the thesis of the play (conform, constrain) and seeing what their modern meanings were, their archaic meanings and also what the thesaurus had to say. It was freaking fascinating. I love researching words. Love it! When I’m not five seconds from a coma.

I think my favourite name in the play is going to be Prefect Procrustes. What does Procrustes? Who is he? I guess you’ll have to look it up yourself…..

Submission: Leaves of Grass to the Yes Festival at Northern Kentucky University