Darn it, I was kind of hoping this Work Room was going to say "Nyah nyah, fooled ya!" ;)

I'm always really excited (and more than a little nervous) to see a bunch of terms I don't recognize. Will this be super specific? Will it be so broad I can't quite figure out how to make it work and still be recognizable as itself? Is it just wonky? Or will it hit the sweet spot and immediately trigger loads of ideas? It's an adventure.

I only knew "panglossian" out of the list, and I'm busy googling now. I shall return with links... heh...

"Usichokoze nyuki." seems to be a Swahili saying that translates to "Don't provoke (the) bees." (source)

Fremdschamen - "to feel ashamed about something someone else has done; to be embarrassed because someone else has embarrassed himself (and doesn't notice)"

Jugaad - "a colloquial Hindi and Punjabi word that can mean an innovative fix or a simple work-around, used for solutions that bend rules, or a resource that can be used as such, or a person who can solve a complicated issue." (there's loads more at the wikipedia link. Good stuff)

Panglossian means ridiculously and stupidly optimistic, and is from the character Pangloss from Voltaire's Candide

Ferhoodle - "to confuse or mix up:
Don't ferhoodle the things in that drawer."

petaQ! - "One Klingon term used as an insult on numerous occasions was petaQ (also spelled "Pahtak", "Pathak", "p'tahk", "p'takh", "patahk", "pahtk", or "p'tak")."

(I have some suspicions about the origins of these prompts. Heh.)

Edited at 2015-12-19 05:07 am (UTC)

Well, at least I knew the Klingon insult without having to look it up. xD

Yep! Google is your friend! I got basically all the same stuff as lrig_rorrim. But I'll add a little to these two:

Jugaad: Basically, to put it into a more useful American terminology, to be able to MacGyver something - to have the ability to create something new/innovative/useful with meagre resources.

PetaQ! var: Pahtak / P'tahk: It's an insult/epithet that has various meanings - it can be someone who is being foolish or useless; someone who comes across as a "weak individual who doesn't carry the warrior spirit within," or a coward.

For the life of me I do not think I can repeat last week and put them all together. Whew!!! RELIEF!!!

I was starting to get worried that I would have to top myself. No. I can settle back, think, turn one of them around and around and write and write and re-write and then maybe write again. We shall see what comes up next.

THANKS FOR THE EXTRA TIME I have lots of work to do this week pulling together the traditional champagne open house at my Mom's place.

But what the heck do some of them mean?

Our master is not kidding about reseaching them oh my.

To actually answer the question - "how do you take this new term and find a way to get the heart of it into something that's authentically you? After all, that is what you are doing - putting YOU down on a page for other people to experience."

I sit with it, for a while. Luckily, we've got a while this time around! I also go through my idea file and look at the images and phrases and story snippets and thoughts I've jotted down there to see if any of them seem to fit together with a topic, like puzzle pieces, a different angle on a thing I had already been spinning around in my mind. I do a lot of rephrasing and restating of the topic (or topics, as the case may be) to try to find what feels like the essence of it, to me. I think of different ways to make a concept real, or make something concrete abstract. I throw random things at it and see what sticks, what feels right - mythological creatures, fairy tale tropes, imagining something in the vacuum of space. That kind of thing.

And if I haven't got a story idea by then, sometimes I'll just close my eyes and put my fingers to the keyboard with a blank page in front of me and see what happens. Sometimes that works. Sometimes it's crap. Ok, often it's crap. But I can work with that. Something's better than nothing.

I have to admit I never thought I'd see a Klingon term in Idol. I guess there's a first for everything. Of course, I have theories as to whom submitted some of the topics. I haven't heard either fremdschaden or verhoodle used in a very long time, but both are pretty fun. My grandmother was Pennsylvania Dutch, so verhoodle was mentioned a couple of times when I was a kid.

I have the feeling this week's entries will be a very fun read.

As for research, I don't know. It varies by week. I generally look up what I need to know right away, then I let that knowledge on given topics sink in and marinate for a couple of days. From there, I can usually write something.

Edited at 2015-12-19 06:31 am (UTC)

I actually already knew 1.5 of the 5 prompts -- I initially didn't recognize the anglicized spelling of the Klingon word, so that one only counts as 0.5.

They all look interesting, but no ideas are springing to my mind right now. Eh, there's time...

Right now Jugaad and PetaQ are speaking most strongly to me, but I'm still percolating. There's something to be said for Usichokoze Nyuki, too.

We shall see...

These topic choices are very cool! PetaQ made me laugh out loud! I was pretty close with both the German and Pennsylvania Dutch terms.

This is going to make for some wonderful entries! Good luck everyone! :) Happy holidays for those who celebrate and I don't see you beforehand.

Peace~~~D

Oo. This week may be a challenge for me. I had an idea in mind, but don't think it will work for any of these topic choices. Or rather, I'm excited about where these might go and don't want to try to force a pre-existing idea on them.

May write something outside of my usual style - awkwardly flawed or slightly self-deprecating protagonists with a bit of dry humor thrown in from the narrator - and do something a bit more..descriptive and serious. I don't know. It might be nice to try to branch out a bit and this seems like the perfect week to do it given that (I feel) the topics kind of cater to this.

To answer the question, "Where do you start in researching it?"

It seems that I let lrig_rorrim do my dirty work for me. ;)

But seriously. Thank you.

I don't like multiple choice weeks, especially ones where most of the topics are words I don't or barely recognize.

It's a similar feeling to reading others' entries before writing my own: that of attention being spread too thin.

(I usually turn the topic 'round and 'round in my head, sometimes in writing, until it slots with some of my life experiences. But it takes an effort, and is much easier with just one topic, however outlandish it seems at first.)

I usually have a couple jump out at me during multiple choice week. There are two in this week's list...and as others have said, I let both of 'em roll around in my head for a bit until one begins shouting louder than the other. That's the one I'll write on.

As for the rolling around...a lot of the time I think of angles. Do I want to take the general theme I've been writing on and apply it to this? Do I want to write something totally different? If so, what? Would sticking to the theme work better? A lot of the time I'll go to work and mull all this over while I'm doing something else. Four times out of five I'll have a solid idea by the time I punch out.

I'm only familiar with 'Fremdshämen', since it's a concept I've struggled to get across language and culture. Because, apparently, the idea that one can be embarrassed by something someone else did, is not familiar.

Like when your favorite singer has an airhead moment on live tv. :/