Friday, June 15, 2018

Love Being A Wordsmith

My title today is sincere; there is nothing I enjoy more than weaving words in a way that keeps readers reading. I don't pretend to be the best at it, but since the definition of wordsmith, according to Webster, is "a person who works with words", I can honestly call myself one.

Last week, R.J. and I announced the title of our next Walt Disney World book: Imagination And Dreams Are Forever. It occurred to me, as I was deciding on a topic for this blog, that our followers might be curious about why we chose it.

It is a reference to a quote attributed to Walt Disney, and those two words, Imagination and Dreams are ones that relate to 1) what Walt wanted his theme park to be about, and 2) what our lives have been as a result of our inclusion into his World.

Looking up the two words in my most used text, Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus, I discovered those two words have many, many different meanings. That makes our title even more perfect, I think. Let me list a few of the varied definitions.

Imagination: creativity, vision, resourcefulness, originality, innovation, curiosity, passion, interest, fascination. (I also keep hearing the song Figment sings in The Journey To Imagination attraction at Epcot - I'm not certain I have the lyric totally correct, but it goes something like: "Imagination. A dream can be a dream come true; it all starts with me and you.")

Dream: fantasy, daze, aspiration, hope, aim, objective, intention, desire, wish, yearning, contemplate, create, romantic, ideal. (Another lyric enters my head - from Walt Disney's Cinderella: "A dream is a wish your heart makes.")

Our work-in-progress not only covers many of those descriptive synonyms; our life together has, and will always be filled with examples of them all. We don't plan to ever stop dreaming, or imagining, and we've adopted another line from a more recent song lyric - from the award-winning, film, La La Land: "Here's to the ones who dream, foolish though they may seem." That's us to a "T" - and we wouldn't want it any other way!

Friday, June 8, 2018

Fun Challenge - If You're Interested!

For those of our Disney followers who saw me, with my husband R.J., on his FB video log today, you already know about the "contest challenge" I'm going to address in my blog.

As I've mentioned in past months, R.J. and I are writing our third book on the early decades of Walt Disney World, and our work there.  We have chosen a title for the book: Imagination And Dreams Are Forever.  However, we need a sub-title to make it clear to readers what we're writing about. That's where the challenge for you comes in.

The sub-title has to encompass the following: 1) that this is about Walt Disney World in its first years, and 2) that we did work there then and these are our personal reflections. In addition, we will begin the book with a brief look at how Walt envisioned the property, and how it came to be following his untimely death. WDW was Walt's dream, his legacy, and for us it will always be "WALT Disney World".

So, that should give you enough info to spur your thinking, and submit your idea. Remember that this sub-title cannot be too long and wordy.

If you do want to give it a try, simply messenger your submission to R.J. on Facebook, on his site Randy Jack Ogren. You have until July 31st to submit.

The winner will be chosen by us and our publisher at Theme Park Press. You will receive a personally autographed copy of the book, and your efforts will be mentioned in either the introduction or the acknowledgements section.

We're looking forward to reading all the ideas, and selecting one that will truly compliment our title!