Well, the truth is, I did not hit the 50,000 word mark for NaNoWriMo- at least not on the book I was working on. I did more like 28,000 words, but that’s okay!
I figured out I have too many different projects going on at once to really sink my teeth into one at the moment. Generally speaking, this is just the way I operate. I like to spin many plates at once, which results in slower progress on all of them, but it keeps me interested and energized to work on them.
Below is a snippet of what I wrote for the last week, on my modern, Jane Austen-inspired YA novel:
“As I was saying,” Will continued, “philosophy of language is fundamental and essential to have lucid conversations about other philosophical discussions. If we can’t agree on what terms are and what they mean, then we can’t even have a discussion, and we might end up talking past each other.”
One of the students raised his hand.
“Yes,” Will said, pointing to the student.
“But can’t you just look words up in the dictionary?” he asked, grinning and elbowing his friend.
“Yes, but in what dictionary?” Will asked. “What I mean is, if you have specialized terms then chances are that different people are going to define and interpret those terms differently. You need to think about the context that the word is being used in, who is using the word, who they’re speaking to, and all of those things. But now we’re getting into hermeneutics instead of just philosophy of language.”
Susan was impressed despite herself. Will seemed very at ease in front of these students, explaining these philosophical concepts.
“I know that some of you have started in the philosophy program this year,” Will was saying, “so you might not have taken Linguistics or philosophy of language classes yet, but you will need to understand these fundamentals for your other classes.”
Susan raised her hand, and Will cocked one eyebrow. “Yes,” he said, pointing at her.
“I was just wondering,” said Susan, “can those who aren’t in the philosophy program join this club?
“I think that’s a question for the club president, but I would assume so,” Will said with a smile. “Do you have any comment on the philosophy of language?”
Susan felt a little flustered and put on the spot. She glanced around the room at the other students and saw that most of them looked just as nervous as she did. It made her feel a little bit more at ease that she wasn’t surrounded by a bunch of geniuses, or if they were geniuses, they weren’t completely confident about it.
“Well,” said Susan. “I usually try to deal with philosophy by using examples.”
“Such as?” Will asked.
“For instance, if I have a pencil,” Susan said, drawing her inspiration from the pencil that lay on the table in front of one of the students. “When I use the word pencil, am I talking about that pencil in particular, or am I talking about the concept of pencils? I think, as you said, it depends on the context. A pencil is an object that has certain properties that qualify it to be a pencil.”
Happy End of NaNoWriMo!
Classic Reads 
Makes me think of the idea running through the book Frindle by Andrew Clements. š Words certainly hold different meanings for different people. I cringe at the word Feminism but that is based on my experience of what it seems to mean to a lot of people. If it means that women have equal value to men great but I often see it expressed as disregard and devaluing of children. I enjoy the fact that you are writing intelligent fiction.
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Thank you, Melanie! Yes, words definitely do! It’s a topic I’ve been interested in for a while and I have a little book on Linguisitics I’ve been looking at, which served partly for inspiration š
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