"Don't talk unless you can improve the silence." -Jorge Luis Borges
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I was word stealing with my creative writing students yesterday. I should do this on a regular basis. I had a stack of poetry books that we paged through, finding words that appealed or that we didn't use on a regular basis, and writing them down. We did this we Fleda Brown up at Glen Lake. I looked back at my words from that session, and then added a whole bunch of new ones (from a book of Walt Whitman's poetry)
Today when I was writing I tried to include at least one of those words. It's funny how even just using one word that you don't normally use can take your writing in a different direction. Really cool.
Some of my words: halo, aria, dusky, latent, dallying, mystic, sullen, flock, prong, murmur, swathed, candid, brine, enamoured, ample, capricious, cosmos, inception, glide, mania, prickling, gallant, strut, seething, withered.
How much fun are those? Feel free to steal--I did.
Today when I was writing I tried to include at least one of those words. It's funny how even just using one word that you don't normally use can take your writing in a different direction. Really cool.
Some of my words: halo, aria, dusky, latent, dallying, mystic, sullen, flock, prong, murmur, swathed, candid, brine, enamoured, ample, capricious, cosmos, inception, glide, mania, prickling, gallant, strut, seething, withered.
How much fun are those? Feel free to steal--I did.
3 comments:
Sarah,
Love your idea. I like to use prompts. I've used an exercise recently of typing a page of a novel I love to get the rhythm of the language of the author, to get up close to the dialogue, and so on. But using a single word to get a new angle is really genius. Love it.
Mike
Sarah;
I've stolen my share of words, but never thought of putting them on a list. That'a cool idea. The only thing I personally guard against is coming off like I know this word and you don't. Nananana.
I like your selection, especially dusky. It's a great word picture all by itself. Gloaming is another word for dusk, which is a whole other meaning than dusky.
I dated a girl in high school who tried to help me improve my vocabulary. She told me to look up words I didn't know. I spent more time in the dictionary than reading the book! Years later, I just wrote the words down and looked them up later.
Thanks for the tips.
Today we were creating "Found Poetry". I have the students flip through magazines and cut out words and phrases that appeal. Then we lay them all out and shuffle the pieces around to see what poetry we can find. Some pretty cool pieces come out of the project.
Larry, though I've heard of the word gloaming, I don't think I would have known what it meant. For some reason it sounds more like an adjective or a verb than a noun. You know, like "The day was gloaming"--that should be a Michigan expression because our fall/winter/spring days are mostly twilight anyway. Or maybe it should be an adjective--"Oh, my poor gloaming head!" the mother said when her 5th grade daughter decided to practice her trumpet in the middle of the kitchen.
What fun we can have with words!
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