Modern Authors Guide

Multiple meaning words spread throughout the English language reeking havoc on the substance of sentences.

Homographs, or words that are spelled the same but have different meanings, may or may not have different pronunciations, which adds even more madness to the mayhem.

Are English speakers just too lazy to invent new words, and if not, why do we settle on saying the same thing for different purposes?

Actually, we haven’t stopped inventing new words, and it is estimated that about 25,000 words are added to the language each year.

In fact, the English language may have more words than any other language. Putting an exact number on the amount of words is difficult, but the Oxford English Dictionary includes over 600,000 definitions.

Not including the various parts of speech and other variations, there are about 175,000 words in current use and about 50,000 obsolete words.

Words with multiple meanings are also not just an English phenomenon, as all languages have multiple meaning words, and many of the tonal languages such as Thai use multiple meaning words extensively by varying the meaning of the word through the tone of the pronunciation.

However, you’d think with all of the new words being invented each year and the vast vocabulary of the English language that we would eliminate some of these multiple meaning words.

I don’t mean to be mean, but let’s consider the irony of some homographs.

Hippies long to wear long overalls and burn incense, but problems never incense their overall mood.

Living in the present is no minute present after you die, but rolling the die each minute is easy when you’re young and not worried about making a living.

It’s easy to spot the point of this article, but difficult to point to the spot where the point was made.

With so much confusion caused by these forged double meaning words, it’s time we forged ahead with inventing some new words for the English language.

If we can’t agree on new words to replace the most common homographs, let’s just eliminate using either of their meanings altogether.

For instance, I propose that we eliminate the word console by putting our electronic equipment on a shelf and comforting our loved ones in times of crisis.

In addition, instead of desert, I suggest we simply abandon our dreams and ambitions and refer to an endless beach with no surf, where you obviously won’t be able to surf, but at least you’ll know where you stand.

Homographs may have their place in the English language, but that place seems to be molded by deceit and confusion, and it’s time to disregard the laziness of our English-speaking predecessors.

Double meaning words, homographs, or indolent sloths, whatever you choose to call words with double meanings, can only cause confusion in a world that is becoming ever more specific in its communications while at the same time less detailed in its meaning.

Originally published by The MAG Zine.

Science fiction writers have a variety of publishing opportunities, and there seems to be an ever-revolving door at the sci-fi conventions bringing in new readers.

If you’ve been polishing up your science fiction manuscript until it’s as fierce as The Sword of Kahless, then it’s time to submit your story to these science fiction magazines.

These sci-fi magazines accept new authors, but they have also published some of the best science fiction writers working today, so submit your best writing and edit it to the bone.

Review this Manuscript Preparation Guide to make sure you’re formatting your manuscript professionally and also review the submission guidelines for each magazine closely, as nothing will get your writing tossed in the trash quicker than ignoring the editor’s requirements.

If you haven’t written in the science fiction genre before, then you should definitely consider taking an adventure, as it’s not all alien battalions and laser beams.

Many science fiction magazines are looking for character-driven stories that have some element of science fiction to them, so it’s a great way for literary writers who hope to touch on the human experience to expand their arsenal, and good science fiction authors can always find a market, which isn’t necessarily true in other genres.

It’s also a good idea to subscribe to these magazines or to at least purchase one or two issues to see the type of writing they tend to publish.

Analog

Analog Submission Guidelines

Fantasy & Science Fiction

Fantasy & Science Fiction Submission Guidelines

Asimov’s Science Fiction

Asimov’s Science Fiction Submission Guidelines

Apex Science Fiction & Horror Digest

Apex Science Fiction & Horror Digest Submission Guidelines

Neo-Opsis Science Fiction Magazine

Neo-Opsis Science Fiction Magazine Submission Guidelines

Publish your science fiction stories in these magazines, and the fans will follow.

Just be careful of the characters you create, as they may come back to haunt you, literally.

In today’s highly-educated society, it’s impossible for modern fiction authors to know more about any one subject than all of their readers, and this has resulted in the decline of realism in modern literature.

It’s no secret that modern mankind is able to comprehend at levels far beyond any other time in history, as the spread of education has reached further in our times than ever before throughout history.

Aristotle is unarguably one of the greatest minds the world has ever known, but there are at least a million people living today who know as much about the universe and mankind than he ever did.

This is not to say that any living person has his capacity to calculate and comprehend the natural and human world around him, but as far as his actual knowledge base, there are many people living today that know as much about the world we live in as Aristotle did.

As a result of these advancements in education, the modern reader of fiction knows as much, if not more, than the modern author they are reading and the subjects they write about.

This closing of the education gap results in a virtual chasm between the actual facts of life and a convincing level of realism in modern writing, and this is truer now than it has ever been before.

In the pursuit of realism, authors must depend on the factual details of everyday life to create characters and situations that reflect what they write about.

For instance, a novel about the insanity of a serial killer may draw upon the scientific details of psychological disorders.

However, in today’s society, a thousand psychologists and criminal investigators know more about the mental make-up of a serial killer than any author could hope to achieve, let alone having the years of experience dealing with such characters that would be needed to portray their nuances convincingly.

Sure, an author may still convincingly write a murder story that will entertain the reader and satisfy the needs of the story, but any number of readers could point out various flaws and improbabilities based on the facts they know to be true as a result of their experience and education.

This begs the question of whether it is necessary to accurately reflect the scientific facts of life in fiction, as it is after all a creative endeavor, but if the job of literary realism is to suspend the readers within the illusion of reality just enough to transcend that reality, then it is absolutely necessary that the writer not allow the details of the story to distract the reader from the events they portray.

It could just be that the pursuit of realism in fiction is a dying cause, given the blaring presence of multimedia on society and the decline of fiction in general as a commercially viable social medium, which is slowly merging into literary journalism and eventually may be known only as news.

However, the final sanctuary for the “uneducated” fiction writer may be emotional realism, which corresponds with an age-old adage of writing – write about what you know – even if you don’t know what you’re writing about.

Even when the facts of human existence aren’t universally known, the human experience is often universal, and that human experience may be the last lifeboat in the literary ocean for the modern author.

The modern author may not know everything, but if they write about what they feel, then even the most educated of readers will pretend to understand.

Article originally published by The MAG Zine

Author Interviews is a regular column where The MAG Zine interviews authors and working writers.

The Modern Authors Guide interviews authors to get insights into the writing life and the minds of writers, to find out how they think and what it takes to do what they do.

We interview poets, fiction writers, and professional writers of all varieties, and print their thoughts in their own words.

Bookstore Treasures highlights some of the hidden gems found among the racks of books at thrift stores and used bookstores.

We scour the shelves of local bookstores and report on some of the books and authors we find.

The MAG Zine, a Modern Authors Guide online magazine, is currently in a state of revival.

We are gathering our resources and in the process of publishing our first online issue.

Please enjoy our directories until we publish our first issue, which is coming soon.

If you would like to publish your writing on The MAG Zine, please send a query to theMAGzine@gmail.com.

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Thank you,

MAG