One of my favorite parts of writing Wonderland books is getting to make up words that you hear and immediately know what they mean even though they aren’t real words.
Lewis Carroll introduced what he called portmanteau words. In his time, a portmanteau was a suitcase that opened into two even parts. He has Humpty Dumpty tell Alice in Through the Looking Glass, “You see it’s like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word.”
He created words like frumious by combing fuming and furious. Lots of words that we use now are actually portmanteau words. Smog from smoke and fog, motel from motor and hotel, chillax from chill and relax.
In my second TLWD book, Celia and Tyrus show up to the white castle to find a huge party going on. They discover it is a celebration of their impending defeat to the Red Queen’s army. (The White Queen lives life backwards so she knows they will lose the War of the Queens.)
Celia and Tyrus are surprised they would be celebrating defeat, but the White Queen explains that we celebrate successes that often turn out to be not quite as successful as we’d hoped, so why not celebrate failure that often ends up being a stepping stone to exactly where we need to be?
Jen immediately termed this a failebration. So a failebration it is. Here’s to your next spectacular failure! May it bring you all the knowledge, experience, and wisdom to get you where you need to be.
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