The Writer's Pulse

In 2007, it was locavore. In 2008, Hypermilling. Yesterday, the New Oxford American Dictionary announced that “unfriend” is the 2009 word of the year. According to the dictionary, unfriend is a verb:

unfriend – verb – To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.

If you don’t think “unfriend” deserves the honor of being word of the year, you have some options. Webster’s New World College Dictionary, for example, selected “distracted driving” as their 2009 word of the year, and the American Dialect Society is now accepting nominations for their own word of the year (and word of the decade).

My favorite word of years past? Merriam-Webster’s 2007 winner: w00t.

Reviews have been pouring in for Stephen King’s latest novel, Under The Dome, and my sources tell me it’s already sold over ten bajillion copies.

As if that wasn’t enough, King also received a key to the city during “a sold-out event at the Van Wezel in Sarasota on Monday night.”

Under the Dome: A Novel is available now.

I’m glad video games are starting to get the respect they deserve.

I mean, sure, some are just mindless button-mashers. And yeah, they can be violent. They get a bad rap, though, and as an avid gamer myself I’m glad to finally see that they’re at least reaching into the same realm of acceptance as movies and literature.

Take the recent Writers Guild of America awards, for example. They awarded Star Wars: Unleashed for best writing in video games in 2008.

The fact that anyone is actually considering the writing of any video game for a legitimate award is a good thing. Many deserve it, and hopefully someday video games will be seen as the artistic medium which I think it is (or can be, depending on the developers).

This is only the second Video Game Writing award that the guild has granted (the first being Dead Head Fred, which in my opinion is a strange choice for best writing of 2007, but I digress). Fallout 3, which is a personal favorite of mine, also made the list of nominees.