I've heard people say that here, "turned up missing" but come to think of it they were probably Southern transplants, at that.

I should spend 15-30 minutes every day on something else

Such a good idea. Your husband is wise. Write something contemporary in first person. Write fantasy. Write some drabbles, as Cindy wisely suggested. Anything to exercise the muscle differently.

Teppy, may I say how much I adore the idea of a "really really bad drabble" challenge?

Me, too! Oh yes. A lot of fun to be had there.

the drabble is always going to be "Well, no SHIT, Sherlock!", written out twenty five times

Heh.

Nothing else in the world is half as interesting to me in this stage of the process than the wip, y'know?

Yep. But the thing is, if you get bogged down, you're going to have to take the blinders off and look at the wide world to unclog the circuitry.

I should go write something. I posted a locked livejournal entry, an open letter to my editor that, of course, is not meant to be sent, just venting on how damned long this is taking and how much I dislike dangling in limbo. I then had to reassure my agent that, no, it really was just a vent. Reality being what it is, my editor is 86 years old, and has one good competent assistant, and is publisher of her own imprint with two hundred plus titles a year.

But I'm feeling as if I'm writing into a void right now.

Teppy, may I say how much I adore the idea of a "really really bad drabble" challenge?

Me, too! Oh yes. A lot of fun to be had there.

Well, that may have to be next, then....

Surely one of the reasons English has thrived for as long as it has is its adaptability? Without the rigidity of most of the languages that acted as legs for it, it can encompass pretty much anything thrown at it.

To be fair, this is true of every language. Armenian is a language very hard to classify, because it borrows so heavily from Iranian. Basically, if your country has been invaded and occupied for any extended time, your language is "flexible". (I'm afraid this does not explain why French picked up "le weekend," but French people are different.)

"Turned up missing" is counterintuitive, but douesn't really sound wrong t my ear. You "come up lame," even if you didn't fall down to begin with, so I think there's something going on with both those phrase where we don't quite have the right verb, but we've got something close, despite its, techically, being quite the wrong very.

Is the "turn up" construction used with states other than missing? As in, "turn up" refers merely to a discovery of a fact, and it doesn't matter if the fact seems not to line up with it?

I've certainly seen 'turned up dead'.

See, for me, "come up lame" is a perfectly accurate visual descriptor: I immediately think of, say, a basball player, running for first base and pulling his hamstring. He stumbles, then gets up, slow and painful, and he's limping; the trainer runs out, the player is standing, he limps or hops off the field. He did, quite literally, "come up lame".

But for me, "turns up" and "missing" are opposites. If I read that something has turned up, I immediately think, aha, it was found. It was gone; now it's not.

So I can't parse it with "missing."

edit:

I've certainly seen 'turned up dead'

As in, was found dead. That one makes perfect sense to me. It's just used with "missing" that bugs me.

I don't think I've heard come up lame before, either--at least, I haven't noticed it.

I always parsed it as the fact turned up, not the person. So it'd never have occurred to me as counterintuitive.