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By Anatoly Liberman

Tales that explain the origin of things are called etiological.  All etymologies are etiological tales by definition.  It seems that one of the main features of Homo sapiens has always been his unquenchable desire to get drunk.  Sapiens indeed!  The most ancient intoxicating drink of the Indo-Europeans was mead.  Moreover, it seems that several neighboring tribes borrowed the name of this drink from them (and undoubtedly the drink itself:  otherwise, what would have been the point of taking over the word?), for we have Finnish mesi, Proto-Chinese mit, and Japanese mitsu, allegedly modifications of Indo-European medu- or medhu-.  Being inebriated allowed one to converse with the gods; intoxication and inspiration were synonyms from early on.  We now have a different view of alcoholism and have reduced the sublime state to the dull legal formula “under the influence.”  But things were different in the spring of civilization.  One of the most memorable myths of the medieval Scandinavians is about a deadly fight for the mead of wisdom and poetry.

After a truce was made between two warring clans of gods (the cause of the war has not been discovered), they met to make peace, took a crock, and spat into it.  Saliva causes fermentation and has been used widely in old days for processes like the one being described here.  From the contents of the crock the gods created a homunculus called Kvasir, who turned out to be sober (!) and extremely wise: there was no question he could not answer.  He traveled far and wide and taught men wisdom.  The name Kvasir happens to be an almost full homonym of Slavic kvas (usually spelled, for no legitimate reason, kvass in English), a malt-based drink, one of whose indispensable ingredients is bread.  However, despite what some books state in a rather dogmatic way, the coincidence between Kvasir and kvas may be fortuitous.  Although not directly, kvas is related to Slavic words for “sour.”  Closer cognates mean “froth” and “cook; boil”; one of them is Latin caseus, the etymon of Engl. cheese.  In Germanic, Kvasir resembles verbs like Engl. quash and squash.  Both are usually traced to Old French, but similar-sounding and partly synonymous verbs, for instance, English squeeze and quench, are native, while Modern German quetschen, corresponding to Engl. quash, is a word of disputable etymology (perhaps native, perhaps from French).  Whatever product the gods obtained through fermentation, its base was first “crushed” or “squashed.”  Kvasir appears unexpectedly in a later myth connected with the capture of Loki; however, his life must have been short, because two dwarfs killed him.

In the world of Scandinavian myths we encounter gods, dwarfs, and giants.  Despite the associations these words carry to us, “an average giant” did not tower over “an average god,” whereas the dwarfs were not tiny.  Giants and dwarfs became huge and small in later folklore.  In Scandinavian myths, they were distinguished by their functions: the gods maintained order in the universe, the giants tried to disrupt it, and the dwarfs were artisans and produced all the valuable objects that allowed the gods to stay in power.  Most unfortunately, the myths of the Germans and the Anglo-Saxons have not come down to us, and only some traces of them can be reconstructed from popular beliefs, the evidence of place names, and the like.  But to continue with Kvasir.  Two malicious dwarfs called him aside for a word in private and killed him, after which they let his blood run into two vats and a kettle.  They mixed the blood with honey, the main sweetener then known, and it became the mead that

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In March 2006, Anatoly Liberman joined OUPblog, “living in sin” as the Oxford Etymologist. Every Wednesday for the past five years he has delighted us with theories, research, and amusing anecdotes about words and language, and today we celebrate with beer! Professor Liberman, we raise our glasses to you. Cheers! Long live the Oxford Etymologist!

I’m raffling off a free copy of Word Origins to celebrate. If you’d like to enter, just leave a comment, sharing your favorite Oxford Etymologist post and why. While you’re at it, feel free to ask the professor a question. The winner will be contacted early next week.

By Anatoly Liberman

At the beginning of the previous post, I promised to say more about some strange names of beverages.  The time has come to make good on my promise.  In a note dated December 1892, we can read the following: “Shandygaff is the name of a mixture of beer and ginger-beer…, and according to evidence given at the recent trial of the East Manchester election petition, a mixture of bitter beer and lemonade is in Manchester called a smiler.”  Shandygaff and especially its shortened form shandy are still well-known words (like smiler, shandy can also contain lemonade), but it would be interesting to hear from Manchester whether smiler is still current there.  The older the word, the more respect it inspires in us, and we forget that language has always flourished on the rich garbage of human communication, which includes jokes, slang, and all kinds of word games.  Scholars make desperate efforts to find Hittite, Greek, and Germanic roots preserved in the most ancient form of ale, while it may have been some funny coinage like shandygaff or smiler.  Although etymologists exist to remove the accumulation of dust from modern vocabulary, they needn’t treat every speck of that dust as a sacred relic.

To remind modern readers that in England ale never had the ceremonial glamour associated with it in medieval Scandinavia, I would like to call their attention to the obsolete (thank heavens, obsolete) word ale-dagger “a weapon used in alehouse brawls.”  Here is a passage from Sir John Smythe’s 1590 Certen Discourses concerning Weapons.  I will retain the orthography of the original (the words, like certen in the title, are easy to recognize): “Long heavie daggers also, with great brauling Ale-house hilts (which were never used but for private fraies and brauules, and within lesse than these fortie yeres), they doo no waies disallow.”  Good grief!  Heavy daggers with great hilts, designed for the purpose of settling private disputes were “in no way” disallowed!  Speak of the Second Amendment and the right of an individual to bear firearms for self-defence!  In the middle of the 16^th century “citizens” did not carry guns in pubs and had to look, speak, and use only daggers.  Primitive, backward people.  Brawls in alehouses were already mentioned in Old English laws.  Human behavior changes slowly, if at all.

After so much etymological ale, we can now tackle beer.  Unlike ale, recorded in all the Old Germanic languages except Gothic, beer is at present a West Germanic word (German, English, Dutch, etc.).  Its Old Scandinavian cognate is usually believed to be a borrowing from Old English; yet no decisive arguments have been adduced in support of this i

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By Anatoly Liberman

The surprising thing about the runic alu (on which see the last January post), the probable etymon of ale, is its shortness.  The protoform was a bit longer and had t after u, but the missing part contributed nothing to the word’s meaning.  To show how unpredictable the name of a drink may be (before we get back to ale), I’ll quote a passage from Ralph Thomas’s letter to Notes and Queries for 1897 (Series 8, volume XII, p. 506). It is about the word fives, as in a pint of fives, which means “…‘four ale’ and ‘six ale’ mixed, that is, ale at fourpence a quart and sixpence a quart.  Here is another: ‘Black and tan.’  This is stout and mild mixed.  Again, ‘A glass of mother-in-law’ is old ale and bitter mixed.”  Think of an etymologist who will try to decipher this gibberish in two thousand years!  We are puzzled even a hundred years later.

Prior to becoming a drink endowed with religious significance, ale was presumably just a beverage, and its name must have been transparent to those who called it alu, but we observe it in wonder.   On the other hand, some seemingly clear names of alcoholic drinks may also pose problems.  Thus, Russian vodka, which originally designated a medicinal concoction of several herbs, consists of vod-, the diminutive suffix k, and the feminine ending a.  Vod- means “water,” but vodka cannot be understood as “little water”!  The ingenious conjectures on the development of this word, including an attempt to dissociate vodka from voda “water,” will not delay us here.  The example only shows that some of the more obvious words belonging to the semantic sphere of ale may at times turn into stumbling blocks.  More about the same subject next week.

Hypotheses on the etymology of ale go in several directions.  According to one, ale is related to Greek aluein “to wander, to be distraught.”  The Greek root alu- can be seen in hallucination, which came to English from Latin.  The suggested connection looks tenuous, and one expects a Germanic cognate of such a widespread Germanic word.  Also, it does not seem that intoxicating beverages are ever named for the deleterious effect they make.  A similar etymology refers ale to a Hittite noun alwanzatar “witchcraft, magic, spell,” which in turn can be akin to Greek aluein.  More likely, however, ale did not get its name in a religious context, and I would like to refer to the law I have formulated for myself: a word of obscure etymology should never be used to elucidate another obscure word.  Hittite is an ancient Indo-European language once spoken in Asia Minor.  It has been dead for millennia.  Some Hittite and Germanic words are related, but alwanzatar is a technical term of unknown origin and thus should be left out of consideration in the present context.  The most often cited etymology (it can be found in many dictionaries) ties ale to Latin alumen “alum,” with the root of both being allegedly alu- “bitter.”  Apart from some serious phonetic difficulties this reconstruction entails, here too we would prefer to find related forms closer to home (though Latin-Germanic correspondences are much more numerous than those between Germanic and Hittite), and once again we face an opaque technical term, this time in Latin.

Equally far-fetched are the attempts to connect ale with Greek alke “defence” and Old Germanic alhs “temple.”  The first connection might work if alke were not Greek.  I am sorry

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By Anatoly Liberman

English lacks a convenient word for “ancestors of Germanic speaking people.”  Teutons, an obsolete English gloss for German Germanen, is hardly ever used today.  The adjective Germanic has wide currency, and, when pressed for the noun, some people translate Germanen as “Germans” (not a good solution).  I needed this introduction as an apology for asking the question: “What did the ancient Teutons drink?”  The “wine card” contained many items, for, as usual, not everybody drank the same, and different occasions called for different beverages and required different states of intoxication, or rather inebriation, for being drunk did not stigmatize the drinker.  On the contrary, it allowed him (nothing is known about her in such circumstances) to reach the state of ecstasy.  Oaths sworn “under the influence” were not only honored: if anything, they carried more weight than those sworn by calculating, sober people.  Many shrewd rulers used this situation to their advantage, filled guests with especially strong homebrew, and offered toasts that could not be refused.

In the mythology of the Indo-European peoples a distinction was made between the language of the mortals and the language of the gods, a synonym game, to be sure, but a game fraught with deep religious significance.  The myths of the Anglo-Saxons and Germans have not come down to us, but the myths of the Scandinavians have, and in one of the songs of the Poetic Edda (a collection of mythological and heroic tales) we read that the humans call a certain drink öl, while the Vanir call it veig (the Vanir were one of the two clans of the Scandinavian gods).  Öl is, of course, ale, but veig is a mystery. No secure cognates of this word have been attested, and the choice among its homonyms (“strength,” “lady,” and “gold”) leaves us with several possibilities.  Identifying “strong drink” with “strength” sounds inviting, but who has heard of an old alcoholic beverage simply called “strength”?  Veig- is a common second element in women’s names, of which the English speaking world has retained the memory of at least one, Solveig, either Per Gynt’s true love in Ibsen and Grieg or somebody’s next door neighbor (I live in a state settled by German and Scandinavian immigrants, so to me Solveig is a household word, quite independent of Norwegian literature and music).  It is hard to decide which -veig entered into those names.  “Gold” cannot be ruled out.  On the other hand, it was a woman’s duty to pour wine at feasts, so that -veig “drink” would also make sense.  In any case, veig remains the name of a divine drink of the medieval Scandinavians.  It stands at the bottom of our card.

From books in the Old Germanic languages we know about the Teutons’ wine, mead, beer, ale, and lith ~ lid, the latter with the vowel of Modern Engl. ee.  Lith must have corresponded to cider (cider is an alteration of ecclesiastical Greek ~ Medieval Latin sicera ~ cicera, a word taken over from Hebrew).   It was undoubtedly a strong drink, inasmuch as, according to the prophesy in the oldest versions of the Germanic Bible, John the Baptist was not to taste either wine or lith.  The word is now lost, and so are its origins.  Mead is still a familiar poeticism, while the other three have survived, though, as we will see,  beer does not refer to the same product as it did in the days of the Anglo-Saxons—an important consideration, because the taste of a beve

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By Anatoly Liberman

The idea of this post, as of several others before it, has been suggested by a query from a correspondent.  A detailed answer would have exceeded the space permitted for the entire set of monthly gleanings, so here comes an essay on the word rum, written on the first rather than the last Wednesday of October.  But before I get to the point, I would like to make a remark on the amnesia that afflicts students of word origins.  Etymology is perhaps the only completely anonymous branch of linguistics.  When people look up a word, they hardly ever ask who reconstructed its history.  Surround seems to be related to round, but it is not.  On the other hand, soot does not make us think of sit; yet the two are allied.  Obviously, neither conclusion is trivial.  Even specialists rarely know the names of the discoverers (for those are hard to trace).  Unlike Ohm’s Law or Newton’s laws, etymological knowledge easily becomes faceless common property, a plateau without a single hill to obstruct the view.  To be sure, we have great authorities, such as the OED and Skeat, but Murray, Bradley (the OED’s first great editors) and Skeat authored only some of the statements they made.  In many cases they depended on the findings of their predecessors.  What then was their input?  All is either forgotten or falsely ascribed to them.  Murray could defend his authorship very well.  Skeat, too, in countless letters to the editor, strove (strived: take your pick) for recognition and kept rubbing in the fact that he, rather than somebody else, had elucidated the derivation of this or that word.  Rarely, very rarely do dictionaries celebrate individual discovery.  Thus, pedigree (which French “lent” to English) means “foot of a crane,” from a three-line mark, like the broad arrow used in denoting succession in pedigrees.  This was explained by C. Sweet (no relative of Henry Sweet, the famous philologist and the prototype of Dr. Higgins; I could not find any information on him), and Skeat gave the exact reference to his publication.  Something similar, though less spectacular (because the conclusion is still debatable), happened when language historians began to research the history of the noun rum.

The most universal law of etymology is that we cannot explain the origin of a word unless we have a reasonably good idea of what the thing designated by the word means.  For quite some time people pointed to India as the land in which rum was first consumed and did not realize that in other European languages rum was a borrowing from English.  The misleading French spelling rhum suggested a connection with Greek rheum “stream, flow” (as in rheumatism).  According to other old conjectures, rum is derived from aroma or saccharum.  India led researchers to Sanskrit roma “water” as the word’s etymon, and this is what many otherwise solid 19^th-century dictionaries said.  Webster gave the vague, even meaningless reference “American,” but on the whole, the choice appeared to be between East and West Indies.  Skeat, in the first edition of his dictionary (1882), suggested Malayan origins (from beram “alcoholic drink,” with the loss of the first syllable) and used his habitual eloquence to boost this hypothesis.

Then The Academy, a periodical that enjoyed well-deserved popularity throughout the forty years of its existence (1869-1910), published the following paragraph.  (The Imperial Dictionary [not A Universal Dictionary of the English Language, as Spitzer says] gives it in full, but I suspe

Today's Ypulse Youth Advisory Board post is from Bryan Spencer, a junior at Kansas University. As always, you can communicate directly with any member of the Ypulse Youth Advisory Board by emailing them at youthadvisoryboard at ypulse.com…or just... Read the rest of this post

How You Know When You’re Drunk

• You’re under forty
• You don’t usually consume a whole bottle of wine
• You can’t wait for more than a minute
• You continually apologise for the state you are in
• It becomes harder to count out money to buy drinks
• Other people start to mutter, “Don’t worry – they’re drunk”
• Your laughter attains unnaturally high levels
• It becomes difficult to concentrate for a sustained period of time
• Your friends become a lot more likeable
• Judgment becomes impaired and consequences cease to exist
• Liquid seems to evaporate from your glass
• People keep getting in your way
• Unsavoury characters hallucinate that you’re interested in talking to them
• You experience an overwhelming urge to gather roadside objects
• You feel as if you may have eaten some bad takeaway
• The nearest toilet is much too far away
• Charm becomes a distant concept and the in-your-face tactics are all you can muster
• Horrible words spill out of your mouth an alienate your former friends
• You develop the ability to teleport and far-off places become adjacent to where you are
• You know you’ll regret it in the morning but right now that’s not important
• You really shouldn’t have done it but you did it anyway and now it’s too late

1. Cold things don’t give off the cold, they take in the heat.
2. Every time you move your muscles, 100’s of millions of tiny molecules call adenozine triphospahte are broken down into adenozine diphosphate and energy to make your muscle move.
3. Eating celery burns more calories than is actually in the celery itself.
4. Drinking cold water helps to burn calories. Your body has to heat up the water to absorb it. Heating the water up is what burns the fat.
5. People who aren’t or don’t speak German sound funny when trying to speak it.
6. Women get a heroine like rush from hearing themselves talk.
7. Jumping on a grenade that’s just landed in your trench to use yourself as a human sacrifice will work and save all the other men in your trench.
8. Emos are funny.
9. We are closely related to primates
10. I’m not sure why you’re reading this.

1. Cold things don’t give off the cold, they take in the heat.
2. Every time you move your muscles, 100’s of millions of tiny molecules call adenozine triphospahte are broken down into adenozine diphosphate and energy to make your muscle move.
3. Eating celery burns more calories than is actually in the celery itself.
4. Drinking cold water helps to burn calories. Your body has to heat up the water to absorb it. Heating the water up is what burns the fat.
5. People who aren’t or don’t speak German sound funny when trying to speak it.
6. Women get a heroine like rush from hearing themselves talk.
7. Jumping on a grenade that’s just landed in your trench to use yourself as a human sacrifice will work and save all the other men in your trench.
8. Emos are funny.
9. We are closely related to primates
10. I’m not sure why you’re reading this.

Image via Wikipedia

Do you need an attorney? Who doesn’t need an attorney for some legal matter? Of course, attorneys charge a lot for their services. Here are ten humorous fortune cookie sayings with lawyers in mind:

1. If the suit fits, sue tomorrow.
2. You are about to come into a tidy fortune. Just ignore the banana peel on the marble floor until it is too late.
3. Would you like some black forest tort cake? I see. You would prefer just the tort.
4. You are about to learn more about cell technology. It is so fascinating that the subject will just imprison you.
5. Divorcing yourself from reality may not lessen your cost from your imminent divorce.
6. Beware of a guy named Mal. This is particularly true if his last name is Practice.
7. People shouldn’t judge you by your appearance unless you are picked out of a lineup.
8. Betty Lou would sure love to court you. However, if you  become unfaithful, she’ll see you in court.
9. You cannot replace your batteries in a case of assault and battery.
10. If you are drunk as a skunk and drive, you just might find yourself making the evening news by five.

Image via Wikipedia

Do you need an attorney? Who doesn’t need an attorney for some legal matter? Of course, attorneys charge a lot for their services. Here are ten humorous fortune cookie sayings with lawyers in mind:

1. If the suit fits, sue tomorrow.
2. You are about to come into a tidy fortune. Just ignore the banana peel on the marble floor until it is too late.
3. Would you like some black forest tort cake? I see. You would prefer just the tort.
4. You are about to learn more about cell technology. It is so fascinating that the subject will just imprison you.
5. Divorcing yourself from reality may not lessen your cost from your imminent divorce.
6. Beware of a guy named Mal. This is particularly true if his last name is Practice.
7. People shouldn’t judge you by your appearance unless you are picked out of a lineup.
8. Betty Lou would sure love to court you. However, if you  become unfaithful, she’ll see you in court.
9. You cannot replace your batteries in a case of assault and battery.
10. If you are drunk as a skunk and drive, you just might find yourself making the evening news by five.

Oh Lawsy. What was I thinking. It is Saturday night and I am home in my blissful reclusive state when I recall that SF's and my friend Neil White is having a book launch party. Neil has written an incredible book that we will discuss in detail soon, so I really wanted to support him and go to this party.

But alone?

Mistake number one.

First of all, I don't think I have ever gone to a party alone. This fact hit me as I was parking, so I called my friend Mimi and made her talk me into the party. I was pretty sure I would know no one. Inside I made another fatal mistake - I ordered Sweet Tea Vodka. Now some of you may know that I have an addiction to Iced Tea. So to have the new Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka was quite a treat. But sadly, it did nothing for my people meeting skills. I'm telling you what, I must SUCK at meeting people. Who knew I was such a scaredy cat?

Within the first five minutes a nice man (shown here) called me over to tell me that I was the cutest girl at the party. Since my main goal was to get a photo with John Grisham - the one writer who lives across the street, and yet I have never laid eyes on. and this guy was apparently his college roommate, I was feeling good. However, he was almost the only person I spoke to all night. No sooner did I approach the Harper Collins table, were they all called outside for a photo. And the publicist that I met...well, nevermind.

Now I must excuse myself from typing this to down some water, lest I have a major headache come early morning.

uughhh

P.S. In my complete insecurity (as I sat alone at a table for a LONG time) I played on my iphone. What else could I do? Talk to my plate? When I left, the adorable girl from Harper said, "nice to meet you Katie iphone!" Oh kill me now... Could she have not come over and talked?! Maybe I was supposed to be the initiator. I am the southern gal after all - all sweet and talky. Make that sweet tea'd and tragic :-)

P.P.S. Don't mix the Sweet Tea Vodka with Peppermint Schnapps and water as was recommended to me. Franky, it sucks and will burn your lips. If this occurs, DO pass it back to the nice bartender and ask him to mix one with a little Sweet and Sour mix, water, and a lemon. Like real Tea lovers do it.

And here is a recipe I found:

The Delta Martini
2 ounces Firefly
5 ounces Country Time Lemonade
splash of simple syrup (That's sugar in water, Y'all)
turbinado sugar to rim glass and lemon wedge garnish.

Maybe I should call ahead to the Hyatt in LA and make sure the bar is stocked with this stuff. We can all do a celebratory Sweet Tea drink and call it the Plot This. What do ya think?

When one partner has a drinking problem it inevitably impacts their partner, and working together to overcome the problem, can often be the best chance for success. In Overcoming Alcohol Problems: Workbook For Couples Barbara S. McCrady and Elizabeth E. Epstein provide a 12 week program that involves a couple to participate in their professional treatment. Below is an excerpt that shows a common pitfall of supportive partners.

Partners often try to protect the drinker from the consequences of drinking.

The result is that the drinker does not experience negative consequences that would help motivate him or her to quite.  The protection helps maintain drinking.  For example, you may shield the drinker from the embarrassment of having the children see him or her in a drunken condition.  You may call your partner’s boss and make excuses for absences.  You may lie to family and friends to hide the drinking problems.

One common type of protection is to give comfort to the drinker who is suffering from the effects of a drinking episode.  Many partners will care for the “sick” person.  Instead of suffering the full consequences of the drinking, the drinker gets special attention.

Partners protect the drinker for many reasons.  Out of love, they do not want the drinker to suffer.  They also do not want the drinking to affect other family members, particularly children.  In many situations, the partner wishes to protect the drinker’s job because it is an important source of income for the family.

The partner who protects the problem drinker is denying the drinker a full and true knowledge of his or her own problem.  When you protect the drinker, you are not giving these powerful negative consequences a chance to work.  The protection unintentionally helps keep the drinking going.

You should agree together as a couple not to protect the drinker.  If your partner has a future slip, you should refuse to do any special favors for him or her when he or she has been drinking.  This means no hiding, making excuses, or caring for the sickly drinker.  It was your partner’s responsibility for drinking and it is also your partner’s responsibility to cope with the consequences.

Make an agreement about what you will do if the drinker has a slip.  The agreement should say that your partner is responsible for the consequences if he or she drinks.  You should not try to make the consequences any easier.

Plan and practice for the possibility of a slip.  Thin of possible situations that may occur between you.  Talk about how you will act.

You should imagine how you will handle the situation.  Think of a likely situation.  Go over in your imagination all the things that would happen.  Imagine how you will firmly tell your partner that you will not make things easier.  Rehearsing will make it easier to act at the right time.

Not protecting the drinker shows you care by getting your partner to face his or her drinking and the problems that result.  Protecting your partner may lead to continued trouble.

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When Angelina Jolie walks down the street wearing scruffy jeans and a ripped T-shirt, there are a dozen or more photographers, or paparazzi as they are known, waiting to snap her picture. They want to capture her every move on film and then they want to sell it to whoever will pay the highest dollar amount.

When Brittany Spears goes out in public with no drawers on, the whole world wants to know. Who cares? Well, oddly enough, millions of people do. And if they don't, they do a pretty good job of pretending they do by continually buying the magazines and papers that slap those risqué shots all over their glassy pages.

What does this have to do with you? It's all about visibility. Every time we see these stars, it reminds us about their new movie release or of their upcoming music CD. It is very carefully plotted publicity. Do you think that Brittany doesn't know what will happen when she rides bareback? Of course she knows. And Angelina…she is considered one of the sexiest people on the planet, those scruffy clothes make her stand out and keep her on the cutting edge of everything.

Again, what about you? What do you do to make yourself visible? I have mentioned this before and it makes people laugh, but where in the hell are the bookarazzi? Why doesn't anyone care about the authors of the world?

The movie industry has the iconic read carpet, what color should the carpet be at the Agatha's or the Edgars? What is the biggest award presentation for the book industry? Anyone know? Not a genre thing, but an overall award ceremony? Who sponsors it? Who decides on those awards? And what color is the carpet?

Why don't authors get all dressed up and celebrate their incredible literary accomplishments like they do at the Oscars or the SAG awards? More importantly, what are you doing as an author to move us into a more visible place in the industry? I've only said this once or twice in public, but I am going out on a limb to ask…when are writers going to start getting the attention we deserve? Movie stars…have no movies without scripts–WRITERS! Singers…have no songs to sing with lyrics–WRITERS!

When you go out and do an event, do you invite the press? Do you have someone take pictures for you? Do you keep a scrapbook of your accomplishments? Where do you display these images? How do you expect to become a household name if no one knows who you are or what you look like?

Too shy? Let's think about this. Go to the bookstore and pick up a copy of Nora Roberts' latest book. Flip it over and check out the back. No jacket blurb, only a picture of Nora. A darn fine picture, at that. She has been working the circuit for so many years that it isn't her words that sell the books any more. They keep people coming back for more, but it is her name and her persona that gets people to the store to buy books that they have little idea what they are about.

So, now that I've got you thinking, what are you going to do to make yourself a household name?

© Karen Syed