Favorite Words

I've been receiving the Dictionary.com Word of the Day everyday since my freshman year of college (which was back in 2001... wow, now I feel old). One of my favorite challenges for NaNoWriMo is incorporating the Word of the Day into my writing for each day of November, no matter how odd the word. Now, I'm not saying I'm particularly great about reading the words each day - many times they end up getting glossed over and filed away in my NaNoWriMo mail folder (yes, I do save each one) but every so often I'll learn a delightful new word and stow it away in my brain's filing cabinet for an opportune moment to use it.

I've been a particular slacker lately, with everything going on with my work and my freelancing, and have not been giving my Word of the Day subscription quite the attention it deserves. I think it must have realized this, for today it gave me pause - the word of the day was my all-time favorite word, "persnickety."

When you learn the definition (which I'm not going to tell you - look it up!), you'll find it's not as if it is a particularly positive word. It does describe my personality in some respects - the way I was about my school work, for example, or grammar (learn the difference between your and you're, dammit). However, if you take a moment to say it out loud, you'll find it trips rather delightfully along the tongue, a perfect combination of simple phonetic sounds. I think the only thing more pleasant to read aloud is Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky.

In other news, I've made it past the scene that was giving me such pause in my novel. I've been moping along, word by word, not getting more than 50 words per day for the past few days, when finally I just decided what needed to happen: time to blow some crap up. It was just what I needed, and I managed to crank out a not-too-shabby 1000 words yesterday. Still less than I'd like, but this isn't NaNoWriMo - I need to focus just a little bit on quality over quantity, even if much of it will end up re-written during the editing process.

Well, time for that bane of my existence - the ever-present day job. Sally forth and whatnot.