Knitting with words

Because I am a knitter and a writer, I find that words and yarn tend to blend themselves well. This probably won't make sense to anyone who isn't a knitter. I find that when I write certain words lend themselves better because of the way that they sound or feel in the mouth. It is much like choosing a yarn to go with a pattern or a pattern to go with a specific yarn. It might be the most scrumptious Merino and silk, but it may make horrible cables or it might be the most fabulous lace pattern but the mottled yarn causes the lace to be lost amongst all the color changes.

In writing my NaNo for the year I wrote about knitters. This yarn and word mixture was even more pronounced for me. Now not only did I have to find the right word for the moment, but also the right knitting words. Words such as needles, cable, stitch, Malabrigo, wool, cotton all came into play. If someone is angry, the word cashmere is all wrong. She doesn't pick up a ball of cashmere and throw it against the wall. She picks up a ball of linen or a hank of black scratchy acrylic. Cashmere comes into play when he thinks about her or perhaps she remembers that disastrous first date while grasping a pair of fourteen inch long size US 4 Stiletto needles. That combination of words and what they represent varies from page to page and it is all important. I loved seeing that evolve in this book. The fibers that reflected the moment. The knitting actions that represented a feeling. Someone who is angry doesn't flit the stitches from needle to needle, but rather she picks at them or perhaps she is extremely angry and she stabs at her work.

In the end a sweater is born and a book awakens. It was a fun process. And now I have many ends to weave in, seams to sew, and blocking to shape it correctly. It's very sweater-like this book writing.

(Side note to all the non-knitters: you may find this true of your own interests outside of writing. I can't really give you any non knitting or cooking ideas, but you probably see it, if not consider it next time you sit down to write, especially if you involve those things that you love.)

Go do this RIGHT NOW!

Seriously, I mean it. Drop everything you are doing, close all your extraneous programs, put on your editing music and open your most recent manuscript. Now using your "find feature" in your writing software (most have them, in MS Word 2007 it can be found under the "Home" tab to the far right hand side). Type in the Find box,"feel." It is the most insanely overused word ever! Seriously. In my 80,000 word manuscript I found almost 200 instances of feel, felt, feeling. There are better ways of expressing "I felt" than using "I felt." And guess what else? In many instances you can actually delete that little word and your sentence still makes sense. Really. Try it. And if that doesn't work, how better can you write that sentence without using "I felt"?

I only left a few instances of this word in and it was in places where the phrase is so ingrained in our vernacular that it just seemed silly to try to alter it. One instance was "How are you feeling today?" We say that all the time so why not use it? But the word feelings can be said so much better with the word emotions. I am amazed at not only how many times I used that word (or variation thereof) but how well-entrenched it is in our daily speech. Another example where I used feel too often was "The room felt hot." Um, what about just "The room was hot"?

So why are you still sitting here reading this? Go. Go edit. You know you want to now.

A special thanks goes out to RebeccaJoym for her tweet yesterday. She is the author of Infinite Days and blogs here.

Oh and when you are finished with feel/felt, try could and then pulled. I'll post more as I think of them (or share some you know.)

A fun read for wordsmiths

I'm always looking for books about words. I like words. I read a quote yesterday that just about summed up my feelings about words. "Words make love with one another" - Andre Breton. OK, maybe well-formed sentences are words making love to one another, but then I try to only read well-formed sentences. My latest word book that I found is Just Ask Mr. Wordwizard by David Grambs. OK, first, I love the name Grambs. Not sure why, but it just is a fantastic name. And then you open the book and there is an amazing amount of information to soak in presented in so many different ways. He even has a section where he encourages you to create devilish definitions of common words. And example (and my favorite) is Modesty: passive arrogance. It made me giggle. And anything that makes me giggle is worth sharing.

Each chapter begins with a "Word of the Week" and a "Quote of the Week" which is always about words. The chapters range in subject from the history of word phrases to word uses. I love when he explains how we misuse words and how those misuses came into being. Each "lesson" is presented uniquely and there are even exercises for one to complete and in such a way that they seem to help keep them trapped in your brain.

If you are as fond of words as I am, this is a fantastic little read. And who knows it may make you desire to use the word baragouin in conversation this week.

Books on Words

It is my opinion (and not a very humble one at that) that writers who don't love words truly don't love writing. Why without words there would be no writing. And to use the same tired words again and again, over and over, day in and day out, ad nauseum (I'll stop with the idioms now) is just boring. I liken it to working in a factory and seeing the same product run through on an assembly line. That is one of the wonderful things about the English language. We have lots of words that mean essentially the same thing. There are volumes of thesauri, tomes of dictionaries and countless treatises on the words in the English language. Every writer should have a well worn thesaurus, a tattered dictionary and an atlas whose pages are nearly falling out on their bookshelves. (Why an atlas? Do you know how many delicious words are in atlases?)

I found two new (to me) books while at the library this week that I want to share. The first is called What in the Word?: Wordplay, Word Lore, and Answers to your Peskiest Questions about Language by Charles Harrington Elster (now if that isn't a name that sounds like a wordographer!). This is truly a fun little read. It isn't dry or dull as one would initially expect from a book about words, There are quizzes, fun ways to remember commonly misused words (they're, their, there) and delightful lists of idioms. One of my favorite little things from this book was a discussion on the phrase déjà lu (and no I won't tell you what it means!)

The other treat I picked up is called How We Talk: American Regional English Today by Allan Metcalf. I've had the unique opportunity to travel the world. I've been to Japan, Europe and all around the the continental United States. (I've been to some of the interior of the US, but prefer to live in areas that are near tremendous bodies of water.) One of the advantages in this is that I don't presume that everyone talks like I do (or the people around me as most people assume that I am from somewhere in the Midwest rather than the deep south - except when I say y'all.) One of the disadvantages is that I never can remember how words are delivered and received where. For instance when talking about carbonated beverages. I never can remember if in the Pacific Northwest we would say soda or pop. I'm thinking it was soda, but that may have been New York or perhaps it was southern California. I know here in the south we say coke as a generic word for any carbonated beverage. First you ask your guest, "Would you like a coke?" They respond in the affirmative. So then you need to clarify, "What would you like?" The answer could be anything from Sprite to Dr. Pepper or even Pepsi. This book is broken up into regions, taking into account that within that region are sub-regions. For instance under "The North" one can choose from New England, New York City and the Mid-Atlantic, and The inland North. There are also sections on American Ethnic, In the Movies and Dialects 2100.

I'd love to know of your favorite books on words.