When I was young and knew I wanted to write—actually, even before I knew—I became a student of words. Words are to a writer what atoms are to a molecule. They are building blocks, Lincoln logs, Legos.
I like to think of words as minerals. That’s my favorite metaphor for them. Some are rare stones, but mostly we have granite, those well-worn rocks that pop up over and over: be, and, of, a, in, to, have, too, it, I. But that rock is what holds the world together.
Spelling
I was a competitive speller as a kid. I often was the last kid standing in my classroom bees. Mainly I won because spelling terrified most of the kids. It was like algebra in that way. So probably because of aplomb more than anything I’d progress to the school wide spelling bee. Then county, then district.
To prepare, I read books. I read the dictionary. I studied boxes of vocabulary intended for students to prepare for college entrance exams. I did crossword puzzles. I made lists of words.
I learned quickly that for every passion there exists an entire lexicon—one for painting, one for cooking, one for woodworking. There is a nomenclature for color, for the body, for landscapes and natural phenomena, for everything on earth.
This has proven vastly useful.
The State Bee
One year in high school I won the district meet and got to go to state, an event that was supremely nerve-wracking. Looking back, I’m amazed that my conservative, religious parents let me do all this. I lost the state meet. I’ve blocked the word I missed but it was one I’d never even heard of. In all that studying, it had never surfaced. All I could do was guess, and whatever the word was, it was one of those that isn’t spelled the way it sounds.
Two conflicting things happened when I lost the state bee. One part of me gave up. I was never going to learn every word in the language. There would always be words that were strangers, so why bother? The other part of me fell more deeply in love than ever.
How We Can Express Our Passion for Words
Try to use interesting words when we speak.
Look up words as we read. (Hard.)
Make useful lists of words. I make lists of verbs in the present tense from my favorite books, and I hang these in my studio. I also have a sheet of collectives there. I collect colors.
Use a thesaurus to remind ourselves of interesting words.
What else?
A Good Thesaurus
The desk thesaurus I use was printed in the 80s on paper containing acid, and it is falling to pieces. The pages are not yellowed—they are burnt gold. Maybe even umber. As if it has been soaking in a tannic river.
I’m really mad that such an important book was printed poorly and unethically. (The Bible I was given as a child was not printed on acid-free paper either, so it is also yellow, but not quite so shattered as the thesaurus.)
Sometimes when I’m writing on the computer I check the online thesaurus. The one that pops up is thesaurus.com.
This week I was introduced to a better one. Check it out.
That amazing word “shattered” above? I found it by searching for “in pieces” in the new thesaurus.
About Bee
Apparently the word “bee” in “spelling bee” comes from the usage of a group of people gathered for a social occasion, as in a quilting bee. Groups of folks can make quite a buzz. At spelling bees, however, there’s no socializing. The hive is dead quiet.
One Last Thing
This week I tried the free version of ChatGPT a few times. I put in some information about my new book on writing and asked the program to produce a sales description.
I report to you that AI did a good job. Its muscle, I think, is its internal thesaurus, its organic nuance. Here’s an example. The book is called Craft and Current, two nautical terms. ChatGPT wrote a sales blurb for me that contains words like “navigate” and “channel” and “flow.” I couldn’t believe it, actually. What AI produced verged on the poetic.
A Spelling Story
My friend Jed Dillard sent me a story his friend Priscilla M. Jensen wrote about a spelling bee when she was a child in Crawford, Georgia. It published in the Washington Examiner. I think she’s right that at the state level the bee was written. And I’m embarrassed that she remembers the word that stumped her.
AI became part of the digital world’s ‘furniture’ faster than any new tool that I can think of. How it will evolve, and be used , will be a reflection of who we are - or what we become. Uncertainties about AI’s potential makes me nervous.
So captivated by all the pocket vocabularies for different practices, places, etc. Endlessly intriguing. Also, obsessed with the Rodale thesaurus but wondering if I didn’t find my way to it through you?