WHAT THE HECK IS A HUSEY?
To be an author of any kind, it takes a love of language. That’s a must. Writing is an art, with the paper and pencil or typewriter–or the word processing program on the computer–being the canvas and brush–and words are the paint. Then, it depends on what type of author you want to be, how you put the art of language to use. If you want to write nonfiction, it takes tons of patience to do all the research needed. You need to learn all the facts and be truly passionate about research. I admire the patience and perseverance of those who are skilled in that regard, and I enjoy reading their works, particularly on non-political historical, geographical and nature and science related subjects. To write fiction, however, takes a very different skill. True, there may be some research needed, to get in some background facts–but overall, writing fiction demands a good liar. Let’s face it. We fiction writers are the biggest liars of all. We write about people and places that don’t exist–and all of our stories are made up and have little or no basis in fact. We have to tell fibs in a way that makes them believable, for the purpose of entertaining our readers. That’s what fiction is all about. I’ve always enjoyed making up stories, which I’ll get into in a later post.
First, however, we’ll get back to Rule Number 1, an affinity for language. Now, my family tree is, overall, very mathematical, with lots of brilliant experts in the financial and tech fields. My mother is an accountant and served as Fiscal Officer for our township. We’ve got the math in our family–but none of that rubbed off on me. I typically got C’s and now and then a D in math, in spite of taking the easiest level of math that the school offered. Yes, I was the oddball in our extended family tree. I much preferred words over numbers. I seem to have taken after both of my grandmothers, who were also oddballs in the family, being linguists rather than mathematicians. On my dad’s side, my Swedish American grandmother picked me out at an early age as the one of her grandchildren who “should” learn the Swedish language. She apparently taught me a few words of it when I was too young to know what was going on. My dad and his brothers never learned Swedish, as they were of the generation when it wasn’t cool to be ethnic. You’re an American–so you speak English–period. But things had changed by the time my generation came along–and as it became cool indeed to be ethnic, my grandmother taught me a few words of svenska. Enough that it appeared to have activated the language learning center in my brain. My parents didn’t know why I used the nonsensical word “husey” for “house”. And I didn’t know why either–but much later, when I studied Swedish in earnest (I now speak it semi-fluently), we found a most curious similarity between “huset” (“the house”) in the Scandinavian languages and my “made up” word “husey”. Other words came back, too, such as “bil” (car), “tåg” (train) and “stuga” (cottage).
My grandmother on my mother’s side was a Latin, French and English teacher and a school librarian, and being of German descent, she could say a few things in German, as well. She was a powerful influence on my childhood and adolescence and gave me a huge boost in the language field. We played word games, such as making up our own crossword puzzles and writing deliberately misspelled letters, which we called “Rong-Speld Leterz” to each other. That actually helped my spelling, as it made me more aware of the importance of spelling, and in the sixth grade I won our school spelling contest. Then, when I took Latin and French in high school, we wrote each other letters in those languages. And unlike math, I usually aced my Latin and French classes. So–I was not cut out to be an accountant, but rather, a writer.
Stay tuned as the dialogue continues...
R. L. Anderson, author, Will Nickerson Mysteries
Available in paperback and Kindle editions from Amazon.com and also in Nook and Kobo e-book editions.
First, however, we’ll get back to Rule Number 1, an affinity for language. Now, my family tree is, overall, very mathematical, with lots of brilliant experts in the financial and tech fields. My mother is an accountant and served as Fiscal Officer for our township. We’ve got the math in our family–but none of that rubbed off on me. I typically got C’s and now and then a D in math, in spite of taking the easiest level of math that the school offered. Yes, I was the oddball in our extended family tree. I much preferred words over numbers. I seem to have taken after both of my grandmothers, who were also oddballs in the family, being linguists rather than mathematicians. On my dad’s side, my Swedish American grandmother picked me out at an early age as the one of her grandchildren who “should” learn the Swedish language. She apparently taught me a few words of it when I was too young to know what was going on. My dad and his brothers never learned Swedish, as they were of the generation when it wasn’t cool to be ethnic. You’re an American–so you speak English–period. But things had changed by the time my generation came along–and as it became cool indeed to be ethnic, my grandmother taught me a few words of svenska. Enough that it appeared to have activated the language learning center in my brain. My parents didn’t know why I used the nonsensical word “husey” for “house”. And I didn’t know why either–but much later, when I studied Swedish in earnest (I now speak it semi-fluently), we found a most curious similarity between “huset” (“the house”) in the Scandinavian languages and my “made up” word “husey”. Other words came back, too, such as “bil” (car), “tåg” (train) and “stuga” (cottage).
My grandmother on my mother’s side was a Latin, French and English teacher and a school librarian, and being of German descent, she could say a few things in German, as well. She was a powerful influence on my childhood and adolescence and gave me a huge boost in the language field. We played word games, such as making up our own crossword puzzles and writing deliberately misspelled letters, which we called “Rong-Speld Leterz” to each other. That actually helped my spelling, as it made me more aware of the importance of spelling, and in the sixth grade I won our school spelling contest. Then, when I took Latin and French in high school, we wrote each other letters in those languages. And unlike math, I usually aced my Latin and French classes. So–I was not cut out to be an accountant, but rather, a writer.
Stay tuned as the dialogue continues...
R. L. Anderson, author, Will Nickerson Mysteries
Available in paperback and Kindle editions from Amazon.com and also in Nook and Kobo e-book editions.
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