Words.
I’ve
always been fascinated with the power one word has over another. Great writing, to some degree, comes down to
word selection.
For
instance, I can simply state a fact: “I
am tired.” Or I can express it differently, with depth and description: “I was
so tired that even if my wife offered to please me beyond my wildest fantasies
I would have to decline.” Or, I can
just substitute one word for another: “I
am exhausted.” Or I can insert a single
word: “I am so tired.”
Words
are available to everyone. The dictionary clearly shows us our options, readily accessible to all with equal access.
But the vast majority of people, including writers, fail to creatively,
powerfully, or successfully apply the free building blocks to their craft.
Think
about it. Not everyone is born into money or even into a loving family, safe
environment, or learning-friendly home.
But we are all given the keys to the safe filled with unimaginable
treasures: words. Nothing serves a barrier to any of us to
write and select the right words, placed in the proper order to force readers
to marvel and react positively.
Maybe
it’s not as simple as I make it sound, or maybe it is. Just open the dictionary
and learn a new word. Then another. Learn five every day and you increased your
vocabulary by over 1800 words. Don’t
just remember them, use them. Insert
them into your conversations, correspondence, and books.
Why
say that you wear a mere shirt when it can be the thing that stands between you
and animals in a jungle. Your orange T-shirt that may have cost all of five
dollars is the thinnest barrier between revealing your naked chest and just
blending into civilization. See words
differently, and see how they go from beyond serving a function to creating
images and solidifying ideas. Words
don’t have to reflect the past or reality – they can help us conjure a future,
birth new ideas, or give form to mere feelings or conceptualizations.
Words
can be powerful. We can’t use legal
language when discussing love and matters of the heart. We shouldn’t let words get expressed
insincerely or lazily. Words mean not
just what they’ve been prescribed to mean but they have texture, color, taste,
and a way of describing what is and conjuring what could be.
We
manipulate words to meet our needs when we write for a marketing purpose,
including the construction of press releases, catalog copy, jacket copy, and
other materials that are used to sell others on ourselves and books.
We
have so many words to play with, including slang, curse words, words borrowed
from other languages, genre- or industry-specific jargon, new words that get
created from our tech-centric world and global relations, and made-up words. The dictionary reflects new entries because
our culture crafts new terms and employs them with enough regularity, that they
become as real and permanent as a word that’s been with us for centuries.
The
order of words, their absence, and their choice all conspire to make a piece of
writing great or terrible, useful or purposeless. In a world of changing values and tastes,
words will always mean something even if our communications increasingly are
compromised by social mediaspeak, emojis, and video reliance.
The way to improve your writing begins with words and the build-up of a good vocabulary.
Words are like fashion – you don’t want to wear what everyone else is wearing
but you can’t always be a trend-setter.
Find the words that dress you best and help you paint the best possible
picture.
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