The Lawless Writer

Adventures in Noveling

New post on my Blog!

Check out my latest post to http://ift.tt/1s3JCco

New post on my Blog!

Check out my latest post to http://ift.tt/1s3JCco

New post on my Blog!

Check out my latest post to http://ift.tt/1s3JCco

New post on my Blog!

Check out my latest post to http://ift.tt/1s3JCco

New post on my Blog!

Check out my latest post to http://ift.tt/1s3JCco

New post on my Blog!

Check out my latest post to http://ift.tt/1s3JCco

“Anyone educated in the art of composition in the Western Hemisphere at any time in the last hundred years was firmly taught that there is One Correct Way to write, and it involves strictly linear planning, thought, and execution. You Must Have a Topic Sentence. You Must Have a Topic Paragraph. YOU MUST HAVE AN OUTLINE. And so forth and so tediously on…
 
Got news for you: You don’t have to do it that way. Anything that gets words on the page is the Right Thing to Do.”

—   Diana Gabaldon, on learning how to write. (via nanowrimo)

(Source: nanowrimo, via nanowrimo)

A Note on Magical Word Structure

okami-panchi:

While scanning through a lot of magic posts on tumblr, I’ve seen a lot of tags misusing suffixes. In particular “-mancy” gets used as a general term for magic works, I guess because it just sounds mystical in nature. As someone deeply in love with facts and the English language, such misappropriations van be a little off putting. With one simple search, it would be immediately and obviously revealed that -mancy specifically refers to forms of divination; i.e. cartomancy, the use of cards in divination.

The obvious exception is of course, ‘necromancy’. The term actual literally means ‘conferring with the dead as a mean to divine answers’, but modern media has bastardized the word into encompassing a strange hodgepodge of dark arts involving corspes. This is wholey inaccurate, and probably is the single reason for that abuse of -mancy. However, the fact that we study eclectic wisdom not typically included in modern academia, is no excuse to abandon higher study practices and formal education. And so, I present a brief list of suffixes and how they can and are applied to magic.

-Mancy: A form of divination.

(CRYSTALLOMANCY: Divination by crystal gazing.)

-Graphy: Writing or feild of study.

(TASSEOGRAPHY: Study of tea leaves)

-Tion: Action of.

(INCANTATION: Act of chanting.)

-Ology: Study of.

(NUMEROLOGY: Study of numbers.)

-Ism: Practice or system of.

(MYSTICISM: Practising mystic arts.)

-Ry: Occupation of.

(PALMISTRY: Work of reading palms.)

-Ic: Having characteristics of.

-Scopy/Scope: Examination of.

(HOROSCOPE: Examination of a time.)

-Sis: Action, state, condition, or process of.

(TELEKINESIS: Process of long distance psychic interaction.)

-Magy: A form of magic.

The suffix -Magy would be a much more logical end to a custom word describing a practice of magic, and far better than the overused -mancy. For instance, magic with technology would become ‘technomagy’. Magic involving thoughtforns would become ‘tulpamagy’. It’s a slight change in spelling and pronunciation, but a huge shift in meaning.

I hope this will clear up some confusion on not only naming of magic practises, but also understanding the meaning of names of existing practices. As always, I’ll update this post as I find more useful ideas, and I’ll probably also make an extensive list of magic related studies and words for reference purposes.

(via wenchingwithshakespeare-deactiv)

Like if you’re doing NaNoWriMo this year!

reignofdreams:

reignofdreams:

Reblog if it’s okay for people to add you, no matter what they’re writing.

Bringing this back for NaNo 2015

I’m in!

(via reignofdreams)