Monthly Archives: October 2023

WINGSPREAD for October, 2023

Spreading your wings in a perplexing world
October 2023                                                    James P. Hurd

A warm welcome to this month’s Ezine, offered to fellow travelers and especially to fellow writers. Enjoy. (Please forward and share this E-zine with others. Thank you.)

Contents

  • Writer’s Corner
  • New story
  • This month’s puzzler
  • Blessed Unbeliever now available
  • Wingspread Ezine subscription information
  • Wisdom

Writer’s Corner

Tip for writers: First, write for yourself. Are you satisfied? Trust yourself to tell the story you wish to tell with your own voice.

Word of the month: METAWRITING. Writing about your writing. Especially in nonfiction (and rarely in fiction), we have the Preface. Here, you tell the reader what you’re trying to do, how you are going to do it and why. Metawriting also may give you insight when you revise your writing.

Question for you: How do you know when you’re done writing a book? When you’re satisfied? When your editor/publisher is satisfied? You’re tired of the thing? Deadline? Cannot improve on it?

Are you serious about wanting to write? If so, try writing just a few lines each day (or each week) using the following prompts. Guaranteed to get the creative juices flowing.

Our writing must never be only goal-oriented—directed toward a published product. We must write for practice, for opening our creativity and (dare I say it?) just for fun.

Day 1: Write a story with no dialogue
Day 2: Take something usual and have it do something unusual
Day 3: Write a story that incorporates the color red
Day 4: Select a kitchen item; write from its perspective
Day 5: Write a story about a couple
Day 6: Write something in the absurdist style

Day 7: Write a discovery
Day 8: Write a one-sentence story
Day 9: Write about a surprise gone wrong
Day 10: Write about an animal
Day 11: Write about a holiday
Day 12: Write about a food you (or your character) hate
Day 13: Write about the weather

Day 14: Write about non-romantic love
Day 15: Write about someone who needed to take a deep breath
Day 16: Think about something boring; make it interesting
Day 17: Write a how-to in the second person
Day 18: Write someone’s online dating profile
Day 19: Write about an argument
Day 20: Write about an unopened letter

Day 21: Write about something that scares you
Day 22: Write in a form you normally wouldn’t
Day 23: Write something based on a random word
Day 24: Create a new myth
Day 25: Write about a cryptid (a mythological animal)
Day 26: Write about a piece of clothing
Day 27: Write something that makes you laugh
Day 28: Write a story with only dialogue

New story: Navigating

**Note: I know everybody understands the things I wonder about. So you could consider these a plaintive plea for sympathy and insight.

Why do some birds find their way from New York to Chile while I get lost three blocks from my home? (True story.) I’ve had trouble navigating all my life— missing exits on the freeway, getting lost on cross-country flights, even walking out of a downtown store and turning north instead of south. What’s up? Am I just not paying attention? Is it genetic?

At our apartment in Oak Crest we have a football-field-sized main hallway, 50 yards down each wing. I walk home down the hallway and burst unannounced into Larry and Julie’s apartment. “Hi, Larry and Julie! No, nothing; just dropping by.” Their door is the last door on the right in the east wing. My apartment door is the last door on the right in the west wing. Not only have I done this three times but I don’t know why, or how to avoid doing it next time. . . .

To read more, click here:  https://jimhurd.com/2023/10/04/navigating/

 Leave a comment on the website and share the site with others. Thanks.

This month’s puzzler

(Adapted from Car Talk Puzzler archives)

There is in the English language, a seven-letter word that contains nine words without rearranging any of the letters.  So using pieces of the original word, without changing the placement of the letters, you can form nine words. What is the word?

So the original word has seven letters, but there are nine words buried in this seven-letter word. 

For example, the word ‘garbage’. This word contains these three words:

1. Garb

2. Bag

3. Age

And the word we are looking for is a seven-letter word that has nine words buried in it, including itself. There might even be more . . .

(Answer will appear in next month’s WINGSPREAD newsletter.)

Answer to last month’s puzzler: 

This one was very simple. Which of the following words does not belong, and why?

  • Mother
  • Father
  • Cousin
  • Uncle
  • Brother
  • Aunt

And the answer is: the word cousin does not belong. And why? Because it is the only word that does not describe the gender of the family member. Cousin can be either male or female. (Alternative answer: “Aunt” is the only one-syllable word.)

BLESSED UNBELIEVER novel

Blessed Unbeliever (paper or Kindle version) can be found at Wipf and Stock Publishers, Amazon https://a.co/d/9su5F3o or wherever good books are sold.

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Wisdom

BRITISH HUMOR IS DIFFERENT
These are classified ads, which were actually placed in U.K. Newspapers:   
FREE YORKSHIRE TERRIER.  
8 years old,
Hateful little bastard.
Bites!     
FREE PUPPIES  
1/2 Cocker Spaniel, 1/2 sneaky neighbor’s dog.     
FREE PUPPIES.
Mother is a Kennel Club registered German Shepherd.
Father is a Super Dog, able to leap tall fences in a single bound.  
COWS, CALVES: NEVER BRED.
Also 1 gay bull for sale.  
JOINING NUDIST COLONY!
Must sell washer and dryer £100.    
WEDDING DRESS FOR  SALE .  
Worn once by mistake.
Call Stephanie.  
FOR  SALE BY OWNER.
Complete set of Encyclopedia Britannica, 45 volumes.
Excellent condition, £200 or best offer. No longer needed, got married, wife knows everything.     

Whoopsie

Oxymorons

Like other kinds of figurative language, oxymorons (or oxymora) are often found in literature. As shown by this list of awfully good examples, oxymorons are also part of our everyday speech. You’ll find common figures of speech, plus references to works of classic and pop culture.

  • absent presence (Sidney 1591)
  • alone together
  • awful good
  • beggarly riches (Donne 1624)
  • bittersweet
  • brisk vacancy (Ashbery 1975)
  • cheerful pessimist
  • civil war
  • clearly misunderstood
  • comfortable misery (Koontz 2001)
  • conspicuous absence
  • cool passion
  • crash landing
  • cruel kindness
  • darkness visible (Milton 1667)
  • deafening silence
  • deceptively honest
  • definite maybe
  • deliberate speed
  • devout atheist
  • dull roar
  • eloquent silence
  • even odds
  • exact estimate
  • extinct life
  • falsely true (Tennyson 1862)
  • festive tranquility
  • found missing
  • freezer burn
  • friendly takeover
  • genuine imitation
  • good grief
  • growing smaller
  • guest host
  • historical present
  • humane slaughter
  • icy hot
  • idiot savant
  • ill health
  • impossible solution
  • intense apathy
  • joyful sadness
  • jumbo shrimp
  • larger half
  • lascivious grace (Shakespeare 1609)
  • lead balloon
  • liquid marble (Jonson 1601)
  • living dead
  • living end
  • living sacrifices
  • loosely sealed
  • loud whisper
  • loyal opposition
  • magic realism
  • melancholy merriment (Byron 1819)
  • militant pacifist
  • minor miracle
  • negative growth
  • negative income
  • old news
  • one-man band
  • only choice
  • openly deceptive
  • open secret
  • original copy
  • overbearingly modest
  • paper tablecloth
  • paper towel
  • peaceful conquest
  • plastic glasses
  • plastic silverware
  • poor health
  • pretty ugly
  • properly ridiculous
  • random order
  • recorded live
  • resident alien
  • sad smile
  • same difference
  • scalding coolness (Hemingway 1940)
  • seriously funny
  • shrewd dumbness
  • silent scream
  • small crowd
  • soft rock
  • “The Sound of Silence” (Simon 1965)
  • static flow
  • steel wool
  • student teacher
  • “sweet sorrow” (Shakespeare 1595)
  • terribly good
  • theoretical experience
  • transparent night (Whitman 1865)
  • true fiction
  • unbiased opinion
  • unconscious awareness
  • upward fall
  • wise fool
  • working vacation

Navigating

Why do some birds find their way from New York to Chile while I can get lost three blocks away from my own home? (True story.) I’ve had trouble navigating all my life— missing exits on the freeway, getting lost on cross-country flights, even walking out of a downtown store and turning north instead of south. What’s up? Am I just not paying attention? Is it genetic?

Take driving. We’ve just visited Amish friends near the tiny town of Canton, Minnesota and are headed north and home. We’re on the proper road—US 52—but nothing looks familiar. Then Barbara points out the Iowa highway signs. We’re going south.

I have driven multiple times to our friends’ house in Roseville. But today I’m not sure: do I take Rice Street or Lexington? What’s the street you turn off on? They’re on the corner of—which streets? Embarrassing to use a GPS to navigate to a friend’s house you’ve been to so many times.

I feel like a failure when I have to use GPS. “Penelope” speaks in a British voice but if she’s sitting in London, how can she know about the secondary streets in Minneapolis-St. Paul, not to mention traffic backups and construction zones? She usually dazzles in her directions but in rare cases she leads us down rabbit trails. In the worst case, Penelope points us a different direction than the way I pretty much know. Furthermore, my wife-navigator is certain we’ve already passed our destination. I do not sleep with Penelope so of course, I defer to my wife, do a U-turn, and get lost. Penelope gets ticked and goes silent.

Have you ever been on foot in a large city, crossed the street to enter a store and walked up a couple stories? Then you come down, exit, and walk away in the wrong direction? Anybody? Anybody? I’ve done that multiple times.

I always go to the same ENT doctor. But each time I have to verify: is the office building near Unity hospital or is it near Mercy? Which floor? The nurse leads me through a labyrinth of antiseptic-smelling hallways to the consultation room. But when I leave she needs to hold my moist hand to get me back to the lobby. Then when I walk out, I’m forced to use the panic button on my smart key to search for the honking car.

At our apartment in Oak Crest we have a football-field-sized main hallway, 50 yards down each wing. I walk home down the hallway and burst unannounced into Larry and Julie’s apartment. “Hi, Larry and Julie! No, nothing; just dropping by.” Their door is the last door on the right in the east wing. My apartment door is the last door on the right in the west wing. Not only have I done this three times but I don’t know why, or how to avoid it next time.

I have frustrating dreams about walking at night, lost in the rain. Or I’m walking in a vast city and recognize no landmarks. Or I’m late, heading to teach my college class but have forgotten my pants, or my notes, or haven’t prepared anything. Forgotten where the classroom is. Even forgotten where the bathrooms are.

I’m flying a twin-engine Cessna 310 from Amarillo to Kansas City. I don’t have instrument charts so I’m forced to fly visual below a rainy cloud layer. I’m too low to receive navigation signals so I follow the compass, aiming far ahead, trying to correct for the wind. Roads, rivers, railroad lines, small towns and fields flash by so fast and close I can almost smell the corn but I can’t identify anything. Finally I spot a water tower and circle it to read the name of the town and identify it on my air chart.

I’m flying in Venezuela and break out of the rainy clouds over the Orinoco river—second only in size to the Amazon. But I’m not sure if my destination is upriver or downriver and I’m low on fuel, flying over the broccoli of the vast jungle where airstrips are spaced out an hour or two apart.

Or take flying out of Anoka Airport, Minneapolis. This day I ask Jeremy to fly with me to Princeton, only fifteen minutes north. We can park there and walk over to the Hi-Way Inn for breakfast. (I call it the $100 breakfast.) The restaurant lies on US 169, a major highway; can’t miss it. But we fly right past Princeton and have to circle back. I warn Jeremy, “Don’t tell anybody.”

Anxious dreams. I’m flying at high speed along city streets below the building tops. Or I have landed and am taxiing through a grove of pine trees at night on a rainy, muddy track. Don’t know how to taxi back to the airstrip.

What’s going on? Years ago I only failed one portion of my flight program—navigation. I’ve worked really hard but have no evidence I’ve made much improvement so I pay extra attention when I fly cross-country.

Do I suffer from some genetic defect or something? Or is there some golden key that will perfect my navigational skills? I doubt it.

So when my wife asks me, “Do you know where we’re going?” I just say, “No, but I figure if I get in the general area we can just drive around honking and someone will find us and tell us where to go.” She rolls her eyes and stares straight ahead, mute.