When Words Can Wait: Right Now Life is More Important than Art
When Words Can Wait: Right Now Life is More Important than Art
Last week I was having a hard time writing. I was exhausted, physically and mentally, from the previous week which I’d spent with my son and his family.
They live about five and a half hours away from us, and we were there to assist during a week of his chemo treatments. I was very glad to be home again, glad that his treatment was going well, and I expected to bounce right back after a night or two of quality sleep in my own bed.
I got the quality sleep, but not the bounce back. All week I dragged. I thought about writing. I intended to write. But very few new words made it to the page. I was just too mentally wrung out.
And I’ve decided I’m okay with that.
I figure I’ll just about hit my stride again when it’s time to repeat the process. But it’s alright, because this is one of those times when life is more important than art.
I hope you’ll be patient with me as I muddle through the next few weeks.
What I’m Reading
Murder at the Olympics by Lee Strauss
The is the most recent in the Ginger Gold series, consistently entertaining quick reads set in the 1920s. In this book, Ginger and her husband go to Amsterdam for the 1928 Olympics, and to visit with Ginger’s stepsister who’s moved there with her husband.
But the fun and games turn serious when one of the athletes is found murdered, and Ginger and Basil find themselves in a hotbed of spies.
Murder on the French Riviera by Helena Dixon
Another light and easy book, most recent in the Kitty Underhay series.
Kitty and Matt have been sent undercover to Nice, France, to find a missing agent. Kitty hopes for some actual vacation time, but almost as soon as they arrive, they stumble across a body. Now they have to cooperate with local police and find out what’s really going on, without blowing their cover.
Notable Quotes
The sun was now directly overhead, its rays arrowing through the thick air and hitting the ground with such force that they bounced upwards and slapped her in the face.
- The Officer’s Widow by Merryn Allingham
If you’ve ever been in a place with really strong sunlight, you’ll love the aptness of this description as much as I do. I lived the first 30+ years of my life in the northeastern US, and wouldn’t have understood this at all. But after living in the tropics and subtropics, I can relate to the sensation of the light being strong enough to smack you around.
Lunching with Cressida was as much fun as taking tea with an executioner – and a particularly judgemental one at that.
- The Crimes of Clearwell Castle by Benedict Brown
Snark! I love it! Here’s another one, from the same book.
I like a chin-wag with the Man upstairs as much as the next boy, but I could only conclude that Cressida bothered the poor omniscient Chap so often that He had stopped listening.
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Wise Words
There’s been a gap of a couple of weeks since the last newsletter, which left the question of which word is the better choice dangling like an awkward participle. So today we’ll answer the question, which is the better word choice: sprightlier or spritelier?
The sentence was
. . . off Benton went with a _____ step than I’d seen before.
Murder at a Funeral by Magda Alexander
And the answer, at long last — drumroll please — is either one, although my personal preference is for sprightlier.
How is this possible?
According to Merriam-Webster, a sprite is an elf, fairy, or disembodied spirit, so grammatically you’d think that spritely or spritelier would simply be the adverb form. A spritely person would be elflike, or ghostly.
But it’s not that simple.
Sprightly means “marked by a gay lightness or vivacity,” according to Merriam-Webster. There is no spright, except as an archaic version of sprite. However, according to the same source, spritely is simply an archaic version of sprightly. How’s that for circular reasoning?
I like the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) definition better. They define sprightly as “Of a person: full of spirit, energy, or vitality; mettlesome; active, dynamic; vivacious. Now esp. (of an older person): physically vigorous, spry.
According to the OED, spritely is a variant of sprightly.
So this is one word choice where there’s no wrong answer — go for the version of the word you like better.
Thanks to everyone who played, and congratulations on unanimously choosing my preferred word in this context, sprightlier.