How Dickens Made a Word for Himself and Became Known for “Messiness"

Dickensonian Words for Inspiration

Creative Writing Isn’t for the Faint of Heart

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson

I included a chapter in the third edition of my multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers for the kind of writers who can’t resist making up words, especially if they feel insecure about it. Of course, writers should reassess such “indiscretions,” but knowing a bit about renowned writers who did the same thing helps them feel more comfortable about straying from the usual. I love MSNBC’s motto, “the more we know…” and it benefits by adding  “the more equipped we are to break a rule.”

Take the admired Victorian writer Charles Dickens, famous for his A Christmas Carol (1843) and Oliver Twist (1838). He invented a slew of words by making an adjective like messy into a noun with by adding a suffix. Some adjectives like messy very nearly demand to become a noun and Dickens’ messiness was so successful it can still be found in some of the best dictionaries. 

I think of new words attributed to Dickens as inspirational. They to dare us to proceed when we are so tempted. Here’s a little list of his adaptations—some that caught on and have been used for decades now and some…well, not so much.

§  Comfoozled: Some say Dickens invented this word, some prefer to call it a coined word. He used it in one of his Pickwick Papers which appears to mean “a horrid state of love,” and “done over with.” Popular or not, I put in in a class with Lewis Carroll’s poem “Jabberwockey.” A word doesn’t have to live long to be a lot of fun.

§  Sassigassity: Dickens said it means “audacity with attitude.” That makes it a superlative for audacity; you know, very sassy or very audacious. Perhaps it didn’t catch on because writers’ seem to have a natural aversion to redundancy. Today Dickens experiment might serve as an example of how we writers might evaluate our own creative efforts. In this case it did double duty for something we’re already uncomfortable with.

§  Whizz-bang met with greater success. Dickens used it to as a noun for the sound of gunshot. His word became popular during WWII to mean a small-caliber shell and it might have been adapted through the decades to describe a vigorous or smart person, but that theory might not be easily verified.

§  Jog-trotty: Apparently Dickens wasn’t thinking of jog-trot, a term used for the slow trot used by some breeds of horses. He seemed to equate it with it with something dull in his Bleak House (1852). That one, too, hasn’t found popularity.

 

Here are a few of Dickens’ words that have happily survived:

§  Sawbones is still occasionally used to refer to a surgeon. I suspect its tinge of humor has helped is longevity.

§   Mildewy was so useful Dickens used it twice—one in The Pickwick Papers and again in A Tale of Two Cities (1859).

§  Soupy, bulgy, swishy ,waxy, and trembly are all examples of how easy it is to add a suffix to most any word. Using that technique probably won’t add points in a game of Scrabble, but if your inventions are disputed because they don’t show up in dictionaries, you can try the old defense, “If it’s good enough for Dickens, it’s good enough for Scrabble.

I’ll be counting on your sassigassity to come up with some words of your own and maybe new techniques for the process. I’ll need new material for that chapter in The Frugal Editor I mentioned. It’s a favorite among poets and authors of children’s lit. You new words could be my excuse to pitch its fourth edition…and make your new word famous. Ahem!

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MORE ABOUT TODAY’S BLOGGER

 

Carolyn Howard-Johnson brings her experience as a publicist, journalist, marketer, and retailer to the advice she gives in her HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers and the many classes she taught for nearly a decade as instructor for UCLA Extension’s world-renown Writers’ Program. All her books for writers are multi award winners including the first edition of The Frugal Book Promoter published in 2003 now updated and published in its third edition. Her The Frugal Editor, also now in its third edition, won awards from USA Book News, Readers’ Views Literary Award, the marketing award from Next Generation Indie Books and others including the coveted Irwin award and includes an almost-new chapter for poets and other creatives who like making up their own words.

Howard-Johnson is the recipient of the California Legislature’s Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment Award, and her community’s Character and Ethics award for her work promoting tolerance with her writing. She was also named to Pasadena Weekly’s list of “Fourteen San Gabriel Valley women who make life happen” and was given her community’s Diamond Award for Achievement in the Arts.

Most Serious Mistake Authors Make for the Success of Their Books

Preplanning for Jump Starting Your Book with Reviews

 

One of the first badges made for the Third Edition 

of Carolyn’s flagship book in the HowToDoItFrugally Series of 

books for writers. See the whole series at 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BTXQL27T. 

Dear Subscribers and Visitors:

I still working madly on the second edition of my How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically with Modern History Press. It was time for a new one because getting reviews is so important and because there is so much new in the Wonderful World Wide Web surrounding the publishing industry (yep, four w’s!) to deal with these days. I hoped to have better news for the introduction of its release with this more important aspect of releasing a book that most authors miss out on.  Thus, think of it as a sneak preview with more on this topic to come!  

That book is still needed because using query letters and ARCs before a book’s release is still a mystery to so many. And, of course, reviews are still one of our very most useful (and successful) marketing devices. So please keep it mind! 

So this will be short. It’s something for you to copy-and-paste or bookmark somewhere it won’t get lost. You might also install a likely date on your calendar—at least four months before the expected release date or the book you are working on right now. I know. Appalling. But that’s a conservative estimate of the time your pre-release review campaign needs to  be ready to go before you type in those last three oglethorpes. No, I am not kidding. Here is a little excerpt from that new edition to get you fired up: 

 

My clients and readers hear me talk about preplanning often because human beings so often play the waiting game. It’s no different in the world of getting reviews. Preplanning for your first review-getting campaign is no small thing. It is essential to getting reviews into what I call the supermedia—that’s the media that other media and publishing industry gatekeepers rely on to give them the publishing world’s current news. That’s where you book needs to have a klieg light shining on it get the kind of exposure when and where it is most needed to assure your dream of selling lots of copies, of becoming a bestseller. That early review-getting campaign should include the news of your book’s release along with beautifully written and ethical reviews of your book. 

 

If there was ever harmful information being bandied about in the publishing world, this is it: “To promote your book, especially to get reviews, you should have a book available online or in print for reviewers to actually read,. You needn’t wait to have proof copies or ARCs (advance reader—or reviewer—copies) before you can ask for reviews. Authors who believe these rumors spread by web grapevines will miss their only opportunity to pitch a review to big review journals and to get the most exciting blurbs possible for the backs of their books.

 

The kind of query and ARC you are expected to provide to a reviewer depends on the kind of reviews you are trying to get, of course, but even the most sought-after review journals may accept manuscripts, galleys, or other means as review copies—all covered in detail in my How to Get Great Book Reviews book. It isn’t easy but the exposure you’ll get just as your book is released is well worth pursuing, When I was working as an assistant editor at Hearst’s famous Good Housekeeping Magazine, we started our decision-making for our holiday issue six months in advance and our stories weren’t always current news. That was necessary production time. Our stories that involved authors often had nothing to do with the release of their most current book. We authors need to know this kind of thing to work on our patience-and preplanning quotient!

 

Caution: In this world of ever-growing AI (artificial intelligence), I frequently mention the important decision authors and publishers must make according to their tolerance for risk in any given situation. A real paper copy is considered more plagiarism- and AI-resistant than e-books and that is true for ARCs, too.

 

I hope we’ll talk more about increasing your chances of getting expert reviews and some others (I call them “forever reviews. This is just your heads up that it is almost never too early, but it can be too late —to start working on the review process for your book. The publishing industry isn’t trying to keep it a secret from authors and publishers. It’s just that the system has been around a long time, there is so much new to know, there is so much misinformation out there, and, frankly, (Breathe!)  there are so many newbies just waiting to be taken advantage of.

 

So, next when you get that alert message from your calendar, let’s talk. If the starving authors among you can’t afford to buy my book, let me know by sending an e-mail to me at HoJoNews   @.   AOL    dot.   com with “Carolyn’s #AuthorsHelpingAuthors Project.” 

 

Disclaimer: This isn’t an exact excerpt from the How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically. It has been liberally tweaked so authors and publishers can get information they need to save good books from never getting the great start needed to propel their success and to help build long writing careers.

 

MORE ABOUT CAROLYN

The Image Amazon Makes for Authors with Series--Free!

 

Once a month Carolyn Howard-Johnson shares something writer-related she hopes might save some author from embarrassment (or make the task of writing more fun or creative) here on Karen Cioffi’s #WritersontheMove blog. This is an extra promotion that Karen graciously offered me after the release of the second edition of my How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically.It is part of her multi award-winning #HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers from Modern History Press including the third edition of The Frugal Editor . Find them all on Amazon’s new buy-page for series where the e-book versions are all offered with a single click. (The availability—free—of that new page for book series is another of her #FrugalBookPromoterTips she shares regularly on the social network X at www.twitter.com/frugalbookpromo.)

 

Carolyn finds time to blog all things publishing at her SharingwithWriters blog between serving her clients and writing new books.

 

 

 

Early Lessons in the Yoga of Writing

 

Effort and Surrender and Writing

 

A personal yoga lesson, writing lesson, and review
by Carolyn Howard-Johnson

 

 

Yoga simply is. Like life. Like love. Like Writing. When we do it we may also connect. Eric Dinyer’s ethereal photographs in his Effort and Surrender published by Andrews McMeel, are aged like a Sienna landscape. They could easily be the route a beginner or a yoga sage might take to the next step. Or a writer takes to get creative juices started or to keep the I’m Not Good Enough Syndrome at bay. 

Way back in 2004 Eric asked me to write the foreword for this little treasure. 
An author-illustrator-photographer Dinyer has worked in the entertainment, music, and publishing industries with creative giants like Time-Warner Books, Columbia Records, Viking Penguin, St. Martin's Press, Doubleday, and Scholastic, as well as in publications such as Harper's, Newsweek, and the New York Times Book Review. He created cover images for Bruce Springsteen and Sting and illustrated The Breathing Field: Meditations on Yoga. And his request forced me to revisit my early experiences with yoga and I’m retelling a bit of it from the foreword for you so my writing fellows will understand why I think writers should give it a try, if they aren’t already in love with it..

I have been doing yoga since by brother directed me in a few poses.  I lay on a delicate patterned Oriental carpet before a fire in my mother’s home; he pointed my limbs in the proper directions.

            “Hatha Yoga” my brother said, “just poses…” He knew my atheistic tendencies.

            So, I did “poses only” until I saw light and knew.

            That was my only lesson.   

My yoga instructor did not believe that yoga should be uncomfortable or difficult but joyful. “Ignore those who say ‘No pain, no gain,’” he said.  “Stretch until it feels good.  Breathe until it feels better.”

Some poses came naturally. I have long muscles with little structure. Working them is like stretching warm Play-Doh. Dinyer’s photos of poses like The Plow are difficult for some but were easy for me. At 63 I was still doing that extension with variations, knees touching the floor above my head. Some poses like The Airplane he illustrates impart balance. My ability to do them improved as I practiced, mostly without my perceiving the changes because yoga benefits deliberately, leisurely.Some, like the Crane Posture require strength. I do not expect ever to achieve them.

Having said that, it does not matter to me. Yoga is not a contest with others nor with myself. I’m like that with writing, too. If practiced, it will progress. I eventually—perhaps after ten or twelve years—read (nay digested) Paramahansa Yogananda’s teachings but only when I was ready. His book materialized in the reading pile next to my bed. I still don’t know how that small volume came to be there.

I did not take expensive lessons, use special equipment, buy a Zen wardrobe or even set goals. All one needs for Yoga is willingness. I admit I ended up spending more money on things like writing classes, writers’ conferences, and reading, reading, reading on anything one needed for that like marketing. But I worked in breathing to increase the joy factor. I think it worked. I even wrote a poem about it:

 

Yoga is life.

                                    We see its splendor if we look

                                    Know its challenges when we choose to know

                                    Its comforts when we acknowledge them

                                    Recognize pain as a companion

                                    From whom we can learn or turn away

                                    It can quiet like the curve

                                    Of an egg in a bowl.

                                    It can be personal as a pulse

Or connect like a current.

                                    Life.  We select its ecstasies.

 

Such inspiration will surely move reader whether they choose Effort or Surrender or Writing—or all three. Yoga and writing is in the doing. Yoga and writing are very simply, life. 

MORE ABOUT THE #WRITERSONTHEMOVE CONTRIBUTOR

 Carolyn Howard-Johnson is the multi award-winning author of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. She is also a marketing consultant, editor, and author of the multi award-winning #HowToDoItFrugally Series (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BTXQL27T/ ) of books for writers including "The Frugal Book Promoter" (https://bit.ly/FrugalBookPromoIII), and "The Frugal Editor" both offered in their third editions by Modern History Press. Others in that series are "How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically," and two booklets, both in their second editions also from Modern History Press. The booklets, "Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers" (https://bit.ly/LastMinuteEditsII) and "Great First Impression Book Proposals" (https://bit.ly/BookProposalsII) are career boosters in mini doses and both make ideal thank you gifts for authors. The one on writing book proposals is also available as an Audio Book. "The Frugal Editor "(https://tinyurl.com/TheFrugalEditor), was recently released in its third edition. It is the winningest book in this series for writers.  

Carolyn also has three frugal books for retailers including one she encourages authors to read because it helps them understand what is needed to convince retailers to host their workshops, presentations, and signings. It is "A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques" (https://bit.ly/RetailersGuide). In addition to this blog, Carolyn helps writers extend the exposure of their favorite reviews at https://TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com. She also blogs all things editing--grammar, formatting and more--at "The Frugal, Smart, and Tuned-In Editor" (https://TheFrugalEditor.blogspot.com). Learn more and follow it to get news on her new releases directly from Amazon at https://bit.ly/CarolynsAmznProfile.

On Mourning the Loss of Ask Amy for Her Daily Wisdom with My Oatmeal and Coffee Each Morning

 

The Guest Blogger with Typewriter 

She Used  in Early Ann Landers Days

To #WritersontheMove Subscribers and Visitors:

Amy Dickinson just announced that she would be retiring her Ask Amy advice column after several decades of serving readers like me who enjoy learning from others’ mistakes and successes.  Unbeknownst to Amy, we have a history that goes way back and I am pretty sure it is unique after reading her columns (and her predecessor Ann Landers’ columns) for so long.  I hope you will find it interesting and help me help her celebrate doing something new with her writing from her home in New York State.  Here it is just as it appears in the snail mail I sent to her. 

Best, 

Carolyn

A regular contributor to #WritersontheMove

Dear Amy,                                                                            June, 2024

I have been a faithful reader since you first appeared in syndicated columns at newspapers where I worked like The Salt Lake Tribune or subscribed to like the LA Times and was saddened to see you leaving even though I am also excited for the changes you will soon be experiencing. As a sort of good-bye, I thought you would be interested in the way you influenced me in ways I have never seen mentioned in your column. 

I am re-editing one of my books (HowtoGetGreatBookReviewsFrugallyandEthically) for its second edition (Modern History Press) and ran across this piece in it which—as you can see—I altered to include your replacement Eric.  I just want to share that you were a morning staple along with my oatmeal and coffee for all those decades and tell you how I will miss you your wisdom and sense of humor. 

Here is the excerpt featuring your famous column from the last chapter in my How to Get Great Book Reviews.  This first edition has been around since the mid 2000 without the few updates I mentioned:

Chapter Twenty-Two
Getting Questions Answered à la Ann Landers, Amy, or Eric

 

“There is only one thing better than learning from our own mistakes. It’s learning from the booboos, blunders, and gaffes of others.” ~ CHJ

 

So, dear reader, what if you didn’t get it right the first time! What if you feel frozen or depressed about an aspect of your review process? If you’ve read this book through, you probably suspect I don’t much like being told no or that there is only one right way to do something. It is part of my onward-and-upward-with-no-delays philosophy.

That’s one reason I love Q&A formats; they tend to highlight alternative views and illustrate what destructive thinking consists of. That love comes, in part, from some of my first experiences as a journalist. The editor at my first “real” writing job put me to work making Ann Landers’ columns fit into space allotted on page layouts the advertising and backshop departments had designed for what we then called the “Society” pages. (Advertising is where the money comes from that keeps newspapers’ presses rolling so they get first dibs on the available space on newspaper pages.) Sometimes there was not enough room for all of Ann’s letters so it was my duty to edit, cut, and fix so they fit and were still intelligible.

     In the process, I learned a lot in the letters about life’s little problems including the roadblocks similar to the ones we authors run into with reviews. Q&As are an easy way to identify problems and to make them understandable because they are anecdotal. So, you are going to get a few short Q&As that answer some questions about the review process that keep you awake at night. Sometimes they are questions about specifics, sometimes general. But they are exercises in learning from one another. All are adaptations of actual Q&As à la Ann Landers (or her Ask Amy successor!) that I use in the seminars I teach.  

###

PS: Amy, I am enjoying your reruns this month, too. Though I have to admit I have never seen one of those professed reruns when it was (theoritically) first published. Not once. Over all those decades I have been avidly reading your column.

How can that be? My memory isn’t what it once was, but I’m still not that forgetful and I couldn’t have missed more than a few of your columns while on vacation over the years. Just wondering…

And, please pass along good wishes to Eric, too!

Very best, your faithful reader, 

Success in 2024,

Carolyn Howard-Johnson

Promise yourself better editing of all your work—query letters to books--in 2024 
with the 3rd Edition of my “The Frugal Editor." 
 
NOW IN RELEASE ON AMAZON from
MODERN HISTORY PRESS

ADVANCE PRAISE
“…The Frugal Editor is part reference guide, part do-it-yourself editing manual, part masterclass on the writing and publishing industry…and all with Carolyn’s signature humor and encouraging energy! She is a master at simplifying overwhelming tasks into relevant, can-do information…” -Dallas Woodburn, best-selling author and book coach 

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