Write Well: On insincerity, idle moments, and character creation
#101
Word of the Week: disingenuous (DIS-in-gen-yu-us)
I was listening to an interview the other day, and one of the speakers repeated the word disingenuous at least four times. Trouble was, I’m not sure she knew what it meant. Disingenuous means false or insincere, typically because the speaker knows more about a topic than he or she will admit. A disingenuous contractor whose recently-built house collapsed might claim to have no idea why the roof collapsed, when he actually knows he ordered beams that were not suitable for roof trusses. Remove the dis- from the word and we get ingenuous, which means innocent and unsuspecting, naive. Add an I to that word, and we get ingenious, which means clever, as in an idea coming from a genius.
Q&A
Question: How do I finish writing my novel when I feel so tired at the end of a work day?
