New words, and writing update

I'm always kind of interested in how certain words come to be. Centuries ago, who made them up, and how did they change through different languages and regions?

The fact that new words are still being created today sort of sheds light on the process.

Today's news brings us the bulletin that "ginormous" has been added to Webster's dictionary. Obviously, it started off as slang, but you can tell right away what it means, right? It's also kind of a combonym.

There is a lot of slanguage (a combonym in itself!) that gets made up today whose meaning is pretty obvious just from the sound of the word. A "stank" is a stink. "Va-jay-jay" seems to be gaining in popularity. "Ho" gained popularity in the last 15-20 years, it seems.

I just find it interesting that we still make up new words, and that we find a need for them.

Writing update

Haven't done one of these lately, so here it is.

Someone posted a New Amazon review of Carrie Pilby recently, the first one in a while. It's now been out for four years, and it's still nice that people still pick it up. Even though it mostly appeals to confused young people, this person is a mom, so that's nice!

I'd like for the book to sell out and for my publisher to print some more, but I don't know if it'll happen. I'm still grateful for how many they put out initially.

It's summer, time off from writing. I'm still waiting for my agent to get back to me on the teen book I turned in a few months ago, so I can make a few final revisions. I'd like her to send it out in September, which is the perfect time for it. Depending on what she feels needs to be done, it shouldn't take long to do a quick final revision, but I have to wait for her pronouncements. So we'll see.

I have a few short stories I like, but I haven't done much with them. There's nothing really to do with short stories except a) send out a mass mailing to a lot of literary reviews or mags, hope your story is accepted, then hope it gets into Best American Short Stories; b) hope someone will ask you to contribute to an anthology (like This Is Chick Lit); c) sell a book of your short stories (only works if you're very well-known), or d) just kinda keep them around and enjoy them. For now, I'm keeping mine around, but maybe some day I'll send out a few of the best ones.

And of course, I have other novel ideas here and there.

I don't have any major publications coming up - my essay in the New Jersey collection was the last one. Hopefully some new work will be generated eventually.

Anyway, that's the writing update.