Xiblophobe: to experience fear or great distress when faced with the prospect of the washing machine having eaten even more of your socks.

…
Yeah. I totally made that up.

But it sounded good, right? I hope it did; it took me a whole fifteen seconds to come up with it. 😉

Weird though… how saying something with authority and/or passion can make people believe it? And all humans do it. It’s how we’re able to lie so effectively.

But me? I’m a writer, so lying is my job.
Making stuff up and making it sound legit is what I get paid for (when I’m writing fiction anyway).

Everybody knows that vampires aren’t real (you do know that right?) but it’s my job throughout the course of Silk Over Razor Blades to make you forget that. I have to make you believe that Ileandra really has been bitten by a ‘creature of the night’ and now has no idea how she’s going to be able to live the rest of her life. That she’s afraid for her sanity in the face of all her dreams.

Don’t look so surprised. Isn’t this what directors and producers do with every film they make?

I watched Iron Man 3 the other day (love that film, had to buy it to rewatch it because I like it so much). First of all… Robert Downey Jr isn’t a rich (well he is, but you know what I mean), owner of a billion dollar technology company. He doesn’t have small pieces of shrapnel slowly sinking into his chest ready to pierce his heart, and he doesn’t, therefore, have a blue, glowing, electro-magnetic thingy plugged into his chest. More than that, he most certainly doesn’t have dozens upon dozens of big metal suits in which he can fly, fight crime and take more physical punishment than anyone was ever meant to outside a boxing ring.

But you believe it.

For those two hours you sit and watching the film you believe all those things. His name is Tony Stark. He really does have metal in his chest threatening to kill him every minute of every day. He does have all those cool suits and he’s able to use them to fight bio-chemical terrorists and aliens (The Avengers, if you’re curious).

Writers (of fiction) have the absolute coolest jobs in the world.

We get paid (hopefully) to make things up, sometimes sensible, often totally outlandish. And we get to make people believe it!

Xiblophobe… yeah. If I lose another one of my purple socks in the washing machine I might just freak out, but that isn’t the word for it.

But… for a tiny, split second, you believed me, didn’t you? 😉