Fog as Pea Soup

The part of Idaho where I live is properly classified as a high desert as well as a broad valley. Given its topography, this area is not normally prone to fog. Further insulating it from fog is the over 500 foot deep canyon through which the Snake River flows. So the multiple days of fog over the last couple of weeks are unusual. Not that I am whining. After all, I grew up with fog.

Growing up I often heard oldsters describe fog as “pea soup.” Usually this surfaced in conversation as “sure looks like a real pea souper out there.” All of my life I have described fog in this way. (Sometimes, when I feel somewhat irreverent, fog becomes a “sea pouper.”) Lately I have begun wondering where this term originated, and when.

According to Dictionary.com unabridged (which is based on the 2009 Random House Dictionary) provides some illumination. Their second definition lists pea soup as an informal noun meaning “a dense, yellow fog.” Overall, pea soup is identified as originating during 1705 - 1715.

At the same time the term pea souper is defined as a parallel term meaning the same thing as pea soup (“a thick yellow fog”) that arose during the late 1880s.

So those of us who like to link a foggy day with a delicious, nutritious soup can thank the British for developing this meaning in the first place.

NANO? NAN WHO?

From time to time acronyms and abbreviations will appear in these posts. A number will start out NaNo. . . For readers who have yet to encounter this adventure, it all begins in November with the National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. This delightful and frequently illuminating contest challenges participants to write at least 50,000 new words of fiction in thirty days (or less.) 2008 marked its tenth anniversary competition, and a total of about 119,000 participants showed up. Writer’s Market has recognized NaNoWriMo as one of its “101 Best Writing Websites, 2008.”

Over the years a number of spin offs, extension and imitations have sprung up. Some of these are:
NaNoFiMo - the National Novel Finishing Month (December) - 30,000 words added to a book-length manuscript in thirty days. Like NaNoWriMo I participated in this challenge as well for the first time. Like WriMo I won it as well.
NaNoDecMo - National Novel December Month, basically an independent NaNoWriMo extension. Its motto this year was “100k by December 31: It’s not over until its over.”
NaNoEdMo - National Novel Editing Month, during which the challenge is to invest 50 hours during the month editing a novel manuscript.

There are many others, but the pattern pretty much is consistent among all of them.

FM - Forward Motion This is another website that is its own community of writers. It is a very healthy place for anyone serious about becoming a successfully published writer in time. The community offers an on-going series of on-line courses, opportunities for having your writing output critiqued by other members and for critiquing the submissions of others. In addition they sponsor a wide variety of beneficial writing challenges in fiction, nonfiction and poetry as well as writing marathons.

2YN - Two Year Novel This is a free on-line novel writing course facilitated by the FM Site Administrator. The course splits the novel writing process from initial idea to initial submissions into 104 lessons, paced at one lesson per week. I began this class this month, and regular updates on progress and insights gleaned from this class will appear on this blog.

FFW - Funds For Writers This website regularly appears on the Writer’s Market annual list mentioned above. Here serious writers will find numerous current paying freelance markets, writing competitions and contests, grants for writers and related information. The information is updated on an on-going basis and offers several e-newsletters for interested writers to subscribe to.

Should other acronyms or abbreviations turn up in future posts, I will either define or explain them in a timely manner before continuing.

FENCE? WHAT FENCE? INTRODUCING MY THIRD BLOG

This post marks the debut of my third continuing blog, and fourth overall. For awhile I had a blog at the Xenga website. I decided to shut that blog down when it became increasingly clear to me that Xenga is populated predominantly by teens and twenty somethings. Thus I really didn’t fit in. So I left.

Here on blogspot I launched my first blog, Random Musing Thoughts, last October. That blog is open ended topic wise, hence its name. This will be a blog about writing exclusively. From time to time I will comment on writing contests or competitions that I have elected to enter. Thorny revision aqnd editing issues are also fair game for discussion as they occur as one manuscript or another is shaped into something worth reading.

Naturally I do hope other will benefit from reading this blog. I am planning on leaving reader comments unmoderated in order to facilitate lively discussions of topics or viewpoints presented in each post. In addition, readers are invited to suggest topics or issues for future posts.

So just what is meant by the title of this blog? In the spirit of open honesty, I am a legitimate male to female transsexual currently mired in the early phase of transition. As such, I feel I can express the male point of view on challenging topics, but through feminine eyes. At least some of the time.

Another meaning perhaps arises out of my working on fiction and nonfiction projects, usually in parallel. Thus, periodically I will I may develop a post (or series of posts) that explores the difference in expressing the same idea in fiction and nonfiction. One thing I have observed over the last two decades or so is that sometimes it is easier to express factual information in an understandable manner in fiction than it is in nonfiction.