How My Boring Trip Through the Drive-Thru Suddenly Became Quite Intriguing
Yesterday, when I arrived at the Starbucks drive-thru window to pick up my chai latte, the young woman on the other side of the window asked, “how’s your day going?”
“Fine,” I said, “how about yours?”
She paused for a moment, then said, “Good, but I wish I’d had more coffee.”
I laughed and said, “Well, at least you’re in the right place” at the same time she said, “Fortunately, there’s no dearth of that here.”
It took a moment to register. “Did you just use the word ‘dearth’ in conversation?”
“I did.”
I was impressed, and told her so. She replied that her dad had been a journalism major, and had made sure she knew lots of words.
“Do you have a favorite word that isn’t used conversationally very much?”
She thought about it for just a beat then said, “I think so. I like ‘crepuscular,’ because nobody knows what it means.”
“Mine’s ‘salubrious,’” I responded.
I was going to talk to her about her word (which refers to a quality of light, in case you didn’t know. As in, ‘the crepuscular light.’ The French actually use it as a noun to describe twilight (la crepuscule, or maybe le crepuscule, my French is pretty nonexistent).
I was also curious about her dad, who studied journalism but she didn’t describe him as a journalist, which sounded like there might be a story there. Sadly, another car pulled up behind me, she handed me my chai, and I had to go.
Now it’s got me thinking how to work a character into my book, a J-school grad who becomes, I don’t know, a software engineer or human resources director. Of course, he’s not happy, but journalism jobs are few and getting fewer, and he has a family to support, so he’s stuck. Does he write novels in his spare time? Does he make notes about the employees he deals with and turn them into characters? Inquiring minds want to know!
But I was impressed with her using “dearth” in a conversation.
How about you? Do you have any pet words not normally found in spoken English that you like to use in conversation? Let me know in the comments!
PS Do you recognize the subject of the photo above? I took it a few years ago in the crepuscular light of twilight. I was standing in line, under Spaceship Earth at Disney’s Epcot Center, and the setting sun was making it glow. This is one of my favorite photos of all time, and I use it as the wallpaper on my phone.
What I’m Reading
The Silo trilogy by Hugh Howey
I mentioned the opening line of the first book in the series, Wool, last week, because it was so fabulous. In case you missed it — because it bears repeating:
The children were playing while Holston climbed to his death. . .
I’ve now finished Wool, and Shift. I’m taking a little break and reading a couple of light cozies before I start the third one.
As I mentioned last week, this is not my usual reading diet, but I’ve found it’s a good idea to get away from my usual choices once in a while. Sort of a palate cleanser, as it were.
It’s not a junk food binge, not by any means.
Instead it’s a way to jolt my mind out of its accustomed grooves to open it up to new ideas, and new ways of writing things.
Wool puts us in a new environment, an enormous underground silo where thousands of people live and work and, if they’re lucky and win the lottery, get to produce a baby.
Why are they living in the silo?
They don’t know, except it’s unsafe to go outside. The landscape they see through their sensors is bleak and unhospitable, where nothing grows. In the far distance they can see the remains of a city’s skyscrapers.
But now and again, someone wants to go out. The results aren’t pretty.
Shift starts as a prequel to Wool, but then the timeline jumps around to the time of Wool, and we start to learn why the Silo is inhabited. And it’s not pretty either.
I’ll let you know when I’ve finished Dust, the final book.
If you’re at all interested in science fiction, I highly recommend this dystopian series. It’s beautiful written, with memorable characters inhabiting a unique world.
Buy Me a Chai
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Notable Quotes
Today we’re going to focus on some poor word choices. I admit, a lot of these drive me crazy because they should have been picked up by any halfway decent editor or proofreader. . . which is why every writer needs a person to review their work, not just an app or an AI.
Can you spot the offenders??
If Nathan can’t see how amazing you are, then he deserves all the hell that blond bombshell can reign down on him.
- Murder, Marriage, and Mai Tais by Kimberly Titus
You don’t reign hell down on someone. You’re not the queen. No, you rain hell.
I guess it was my fault for not realizing “diffusing a bomb” was going to be on the to-do list.
- On the Slayed Page by Jasmine Webb
Diffuse means to spread out. Defuse means to remove the fuse from. Trust me, if I’m in a room with a bomb, I absolutely, positively, do not want it to diffuse! Here’s an article about the difference.