Semantic Infatuation
The road from imaginary to dictionary
Hey! Do you remember learning words?
Not the odd vocabulary that you write down to look up later, and not the lists and lists of specific definitions memorized for school.
I mean the genesis of your own speech.
The basics of your verbal world.
When an absence of thoughts or the abstraction of thoughts was put into specific sounds in a very, very young mind. How intuition guided the process into a learned grammar that became your native language.
For most people, this was undoubtedly so early in life there aren’t any memories of how the tongue found its voice. No clear beginning to how most words were learned. It would seem like they have simply always existed in your head.
Rather than prescribed rules and pedigree, these primal emotions are what determine whether or not a particular word feels real.
Revification
I personally love playing with the space between that semantic inconsistency. In other words, most people derive meaning not from strict definitions, but rather through inferred context and subtle rhetoric.
Enter the lawyer and their playground between the spirit and the letter of the law.
I bring all this up not just to ramble, but to dive into the name of my latest project, Revification.
My good friend Bashir told me I should join National Novel Writing Month. I protested and scoffed at the idea at first, but ended up joining anyway. My own mind playing with that awkwardness of the discrepancy between how I want to appear and what I actually want to do.
So, I wrote Revification as a part of NaNoWriMo. I went all in with nothing but a vague notion of something that could become a story. I knew it would probably be the strangest thing I ever wrote, but I also saw this as the perfect opportunity to get that out of my system and into the world.
The plot twists into a tight knot around confusing and contradictory concepts. Frantic scenes that shift between one line of dialogue and the next. The kind of thing you’d find in your dreams—or the kind of thing I find in my nightmares.
The most basic summary of the story would be a few lines about wormholes and trauma. I call it science fantasy and let myself get carried away with my imagined understanding of a neglected aspect of our and other universes.
As I see it, wormholes theoretically bridge the gap between two points in space-time. A pretty nifty workaround to the cosmic speed limit light seems to impose. However, that’s not the bit that sparked inspiration.
No.
What I ran away with was the fact that any “bridge” would be reaching into something else. There must be something “under” that bridge.
So I ask, what if there was a living being or an entity… waiting?
At best, there would be a cosmic culture clash. Our universe and its physics would be incomprehensible to this new friend. The feeling would be mutual and that’s with the best interpretation.
Maybe this thing would hunger for our reality. A battle of the mind as time and physics breakdown inside the wormhole.
A lot of room for absolutely crazy exposition there!
I found the writing process almost therapeutic as I described my more vicious visions and traumatic transitions. I also felt inspired to define a new word for the title:
What do you think it means?
Disclaimer: if you know French, that’s cheating!
The keen eyed among you or those who have memorized their favorite dictionary will possibly see a hidden revive and a suffix -ification. However, that still seems slightly off.
And if you feel that way, you’d be right!
That confusion is exactly what I wanted to play with!
Revification is a word I made up that sounds like fancy English or looks like misspelled French.
There is a word Revivification in French that means revitalization, but I wanted to take my obfuscation two levels deeper.
The title of the book is a play on the French word rêve and the suffix -ification.
I wanted to paint a picture of becoming or rendering or making a dream.
So, if that sounds interesting or amusing to you, you can get a copy of Revification on Amazon:
Inter-dimensional Corner Store
The Maneus Book Club reached the end of Book II last week!
To celebrate, I’m setting up a virtual meetup like I did for Book I. I’m pretty new to doing all this, so the exact timing and schedule will be somewhat flexible, but it’s looking to take place on Friday in the late afternoon European time and in the morning American time.
That means you also have about a week to catch up if you want to participate!
Although to be honest, feel free to join even if you’re behind. You’ll get spoiled, but if you want to listen in on the conversations, it may be fun.
With the extra week and some time before diving into Book III, I thought more lighthearted questions would be appropriate.
Both here in the newsletter and on the Maneus Book Club, I want to ask everyone to list a few of their favorites:
Favorite quote found at the beginning of a chapter
Favorite scene in all of Book II
Favorite character in all of Book II
A little more open ended and all about personal taste. I think it’ll be fun to see which flavors everyone has enjoyed.
Defined Measures
The journey or the destination, what I love most is the taste of the stew that guides the conversation.
We may not remember how we learned to think or talk, but that instinct now allows us to share many emotions and stories.
As a writer, that’s all I can hope for.
Until next time.
Cheers,
John