Sharp Words

Does anyone else have words that they consistently misread? (Which is something Freud probably would have a field day with.)

The words I misread are shopfitter and shopfitting (and other derivations), which I see fairly frequently on the sides of vans during my regular commute to work.

I always always read them as shoplifter and shoplifting…  Today I saw a van labelled ‘MJM Shopfitters’ and misread it in passing (well, it was dark) as ‘MUM Shoplifters’ - which had me very confused for a moment or two.

‘Fess up! Please tell me I’m not the only one…

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5 out of 10

I started to write a review of Fangland right after reading it, and finished it up today. And then WordPress ate it, somehow. (OK, I suspect I managed to delete it myself while editing.) So, I’m attempting another review, but it’s likely to be more perfunctory. Grrrph.

Even a couple of weeks after reading this novel (and starting to write the (eaten) review), I can’t decide if I liked it or not. I enjoyed reading it, in that I was gripped by the story and I wanted to know what would happen (and if any of the hinted-at parallels to Dracula would actually came to fruition).  However, I don’t feel that the story really knew what it wanted to be - horror, satire, a discorse on the values held in the world today, or something else entirely. And it definitely did miss the boat on the potential crossover with Dracula.

The protagonist of Fangland is a TV production assistant named Evangeline Harker, who goes missing in Romania while trying to interview a crime lord (spot the connections already?) for the New York-based show on which she works, The Hour (which is presumably based on 60 Minutes, on which the author John Marks used to work). Sure enough, Evangeline shows up some months later, raving in a convent. However, someone has been using her email address to correspond with her assistant back in New York, and three large crates have been delivered to the studios of The Hour. And sure enough, sooner rather than later, all hell breaks loose.

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I’ve been thinking lately about my identity - identities - as a writer, prompted by an article a while back on the Guardian books blog (”What’s in a pseudonym?“). Many authors use names not their own. Some do it to disguise their identities; some (including at least one of my favourite SF/fantasy writers) use different names because their novels they published under another name weren’t that successful. Others write in different genres under different names - Iain Banks being a good example.

And I think that’s where I’m headed. Although I don’t want to lose the Sharp that makes this domain name so meaningful, I’ve already started posting my poetry as ‘C Sharp’; I’m intending to shift to using ‘C A Sharp’ for any fantasy/SF writing, and to use my name in full for everything else. Why? Well, I suppose it’s because when I’m writing pseudo-literary chicklit-stuff, I don’t want that stuff to be confused with the writer who produces fantasy novels - I suppose, because what appeals to one reader might not appeal to another.

Is this a good idea? Is it just confusing? I’ll add that I think it actually helps me write - I can switch hats (or identities) depending on what I’m writing, which will help me to have more than one thing on the go at a time (and despite my lack of Work in Progress postings, I do have a few things on the go at the moment; I’m just trying to get my technical writing deadline out of the way first though).

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“Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted than when we read it in the original author?”
Phillip G. Hamerton
[Quote supplied by the Quotations Page]

That’s an interesting observation, but a fairly obvious one: it’s easier to recognise the importance or greatness of a quotation when you see only the quotation itself, than when you see it surrounded by a lot of other words which may or may not have the same merit.

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I looked through some old files to find this one, which was written during the year I spent in Italy, for the man I left behind.  I had wanted to write something new, but I’ve been too busy with work and too sick with flu, alas.

A poem about keeping you warm

When I think of you
  in your cold bed
  in your cold room
  in your cold country
I wish I could be there to warm you.
Beneath your checkered duvet
  we could snuggle close
  arms and legs entwined
  whispering in each other’s ear.
Our bodies would make a circuit of heat
  flowing from you to me
    me to you
  with no broken connections.
And your wet kisses warming my insides
And your hands warming my skin.
Cocooned in gentleness and warmth
  we would doze,
  and waking, hug tightly,
So that our heat would warm our hearts
  that had been too long cold and lonely.

© 1994 C Sharp

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Since this is one of the most common search terms used to find this website, I thought I’d obligingly list some of the other words for sharp on their own page, and also put a great big link to the page on the sidebar!

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