Words in the River of Our Thoughts

Copyright Glo Lewis June 16, 2023

 

Dear Readers of My Blog, 💙

I'm so happy to be back here writing to you. I have been thinking about this post since I published my first one on Sunday (6/11/2023), so my sister suggested that I enter my ideas into a notebook as they flourish in my mind, which is a great recommendation for any writer, but especially those who are also senior citizens, because, as we know, it's so easy to forget inspiration that flies by like a shooting star while we are thinking and doing our daily walk around the coffee table, for example. That's how I get my exercise, by the way. Most days, sans shoes, wearing only house slippers and a nightgown, and finding no need even for underwear, I pad around my coffee table and sofa in the front room in the morning after breakfast, sometimes including a quick jaunt down the long corridor to my bedroom and back, and around. While walking, I may turn on the ID channel or listen to music on the SiriusXM channels; I like the Sinatra, Love, and Elvis stations but there are numerous channels with every conceivable brand of music to enjoy as one is so inclined. Frequently, however, of late I walk in silence, enjoying the quiet company of my cats and the sound of solitude, which I cherish. I try to get in at least one solid hour of walking after breakfast, which normally includes working the backs of my arms and later using seven-ounce weights that I Velcro to my wrists to work my upper chest, so my breasts don't sag so, as they are wont to do in old age. Then I bend and work my spine and rise and turn my aching neck to and from--all while walking. (Initially, I wrote, “to and fro,” but Microsoft’s Word Editor advised that the word, “fro,” is archaic, about which we will discuss more, later in this post.) When I brush my teeth, I walk another 15 minutes, and in the afternoon when I speak with my sister on our cell phones, I sometimes get in another 20 minutes or so. Occasionally, I let myself off the hook, but most days, I adhere to this walking regimen to stay healthy as best I can. I like my in-house program, because it doesn't require any concern for the weather, clothing, gear, dubious-looking humans, barking dogs, or biting insects. It's a very peaceful form of exercise, which I highly recommend for the uninitiated. So don't knock it, if you haven't tried it. Both my sister and my brother-in-law include at least some in-house walking now too, around their dining room table and out into the foyer or onto their veranda.

Alas, onto writing: In the last few days, I did some preliminary research into producing a blog about writing directed at senior citizens. Now, granted, ideally, I would have done this look-see before I plunged in. However, I'm glad that I didn't, because I found that so many bloggers are in this niche that one could easily get discouraged. And I know that I have a great deal to offer you about writing. Additionally, my blog is free to you, and you won't have to take a class or follow an outline, other than to get in there and write and keep after it at least twice a week, but preferably every day.

I also read that to build up a following of readers of my blog that unless I am someone who can just get in there and bang out relevant and interesting copy, I should start with a cache of 10 to 15 blogs that I can publish two to four times per week. Well, I didn't create those either, because, frankly, I was ready to begin, and I hit the ground running. So now, I might be playing catch-up, but I’m not worried about it, because I feel confident that I have valuable information to share with you that I can parse out in posts like letters.

Therefore, let’s make a start of it, shall we? First, I want to say that no matter what genre you are working in, whether it be journaling, memoir, short story, poem, novel, screenplay, nonfiction article, or some combination of mediums, if it’s boring to you, it will be boring to the reader, so page by page, crawl through your work, spicing things up, with this caveat, as someone wise once wrote: “When you write, write, and when you edit, edit.” Keep those two endeavors largely separate, so that you don’t break the flow of the river of your thoughts. When we write, we basically paint with words to create something artistic, even if it’s nonfiction. So, words are a writer’s primary tool. We make vocabulary our business. Try to use online dictionaries, or, if using a hard-copy dictionary, make sure that it’s no older than 18 years, because language is a living thing that changes over a generation or two.

As writers, we seek to have our writing understood by readers, so we refrain from using archaic or arcane words. The word, “arcane,” means understood by few; mysterious or secret, according to Oxford Languages, which also advises that “archaic” means very old or old-fashioned. A synonym for “archaic” is “antiquated,” which means characteristic of an earlier or more primitive time or epoch. Instead, we strive to keep our writing fresh with current words, unless we are quoting someone or writing dialogue from another era. When you sit down to work on your writing, have your writing shoes on and be cognizant of the language that you are employing, to keep reader interest. And use Word’s Editor, I recommend, even more so than Grammarly, because, in my opinion, Grammarly is anal and its bot frequently seeks to rewrite one’s prose to where it’s not at all what you intended, so you must really watch out for that one. But Word’s Editor is a finely tuned machine jetting one to their thought-filled destination, when used judiciously, so become acquainted with its various areas of expertise.

In writing to get one’s story down and asking every step of the way, is this compelling writing, we reach into our writer’s tool kit to use words properly. For example, don’t write “insure,” if you mean “ensure,” and vice versa. Such words that sound the same but mean different things are called homophones, and the English language is replete with them.

Also important is the use of similes and metaphors. A simile is where we write that a person, place, animal, or thing is like something else. And a metaphor is when we assert that something is another thing. We want to spend quality time devising unique metaphors and similes. We don’t want to write clichés such as, “the day was as crisp as a red apple,” which is something that I actually did mimic in one of my stories in grad school in the Master’s in Writing Program at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, after I had read an article, which stated that an experienced writer, knowing what they are doing, can sometimes use a cliché. In an office meeting with one of the assistant professors, however, I was called out on this sentence in one of my pieces. She said, “You’re too good a writer to be using a cliché like this.” I was chastised and regretted the use, so I didn’t even bother to explain that I had read this article, you see, and blah and blah. She was right, and I should have known better. But I do think that the writer of the article meant well and was simply striving for a point that when we command a level of accomplishment, we may sprinkle in a short dash of a cliché, such as, just winging it here— “The guy made a science of assholery.” Maybe that’s not a good example. But I believe that you are savvy, and you get my drift. So instead of declaring, for example, “She ran like the wind,” aspire to something unique such as maybe, “The wind had nothing on her. She was the wind.” You can probably do better than my example here, but the idea is the reach for your best on each sentence, with all your exceptional words, with panache, which means “flamboyant confidence of style or manner” (Oxford Languages).

One last item today, folks, is the importance of mixing it up with active verbs. If memory serves, I recall, for example, Larry McMurtry, penning in Anything for Billy, the words, “They farted their way across the prairie.” He could have written that they had gas and it was smelly in the carriage, but his use of “farted” adds just the right comedic touch to make the scene memorable.

And finally, remember to read as much as you can by a variety of authors in a medley of genres, even if you have cataracts or are life-weary and are only able to manage a paragraph of reading per day. Make that one paragraph count. Commit to memory and jot a note about words that are new to you or ideas about where or how to use them to paint your own masterpieces.

God Bless, and more to come…Glo