The mind is interesting. It often captures glimpses of thoughts and ideas, but then has a difficult time keeping hold of them for long periods of time, especially in all their nuances. Ideas, and thoughts about those ideas, can be like the notes of a musical score, delightful to contemplate, but passing by in real time. If it is a good thought, perhaps it may pass by again. Perhaps not. Some ideas are interesting enough that they will pass by repeatedly, flirting with and teasing your mind until you grab ahold of one of them and throw it down on the paper so you can examine it more thoroughly.
Bam! Take that, Thought! You have been transformed into words and now you’re stuck on paper until someone erases you, wipes you off, deletes you, or burns you in a fire.
Words are funny things though. They seem to have a mind of their own. Sometimes, when you’re looking for just the right word, it will hide behind other words like a shy child hiding between his mother’s knees when a stranger comes to the house. At times, a hiding word might peek its little face out to see if you’re still looking for it. But it only peaks long enough to catch a glimpse of its nose and then it quickly darts to some new hiding place. Hide and seek with words can be frustrating when you really need to find “just the right word,” and in a hurry. I figure some words are just like that so its best to embrace that part of the experience and play along. It’s much more fun that way.
For me–and maybe you’ve experienced this too–there are those words that like to jump into the middle of my writing where they don’t belong. They’re also like children, but not like the ones who play hide and seek. These words are precocious. They’re like that one kid in grammar school who raises his hand every time the teacher asks a question-even after she’s already called on someone else. These words can’t seem to get enough attention so they try to nudge their way into every sentence. When I mean to use “enraged,” for example, “upset” jumps in the way, waving its puny arms saying, “Me! Me! Pick me!” And don’t even get me started on “very.” She is so annoying. She gets under my feet so that I trip over her every time I reach for another adverb. See what just happened there? I tell you, this last sentence is the perfect example. When I reached for “adverb,” “word” got in the way and plopped down ahead of it. I literally had to erase “word” and type out “adverb” in its place.
That’s how words are, I guess. It’s just par for the course. Speaking of cliches, remind me to say something about them before I wrap this up.
Anyway, words also like to play and be played with. As much as we use them every day, they probably don’t get the individual attention they deserve. It’s no wonder so many of them grow up to be deviant. For example, words enjoy hearing their stories read to them, especially stories of their personal etymologies and contributions to the meaning of things. This is when they seem to behave the best. You can just see their little faces beam with delight when someone takes the time to recount the legends of their great-great-grand word on their Latin mother’s side. And when they tire of sitting, they like to be taken on long walks so they can bob up and down in our heads like a buoy on some gentle body of water. It never ceases to amaze me how lucid and cogent they become after a leisurely stroll through a city park or down a country lane.
Of course, their favorite pastime is getting to play with other words they don’t normally get to see. When they get special playtime with distant cousins and such they often surprise us with how intelligent they are, and delight us in ways we never anticipated. For example looking and listening to a group of words play together has delighted and inspired writers for eons. Take the now-long-dead poet and playwright, William Shakespeare, for example. His words played so beautifully together, he decided to set some of them up in their own little sonnets and display them so the whole world could enjoy them. Here, take a peek at one of my favorites:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.
But you have to be careful. There are some old blood feuds between words and if you’re not paying attention and leave these ones alone for too long, they get a little testy, and occasionally become combative. Like a couple of alley cats fighting over a dead pigeon, there’s a lot of hissing and screeching, and more often that you might think the conflict gets so nasty it will raise the hair on the back of your neck too.
Oh! And, while I’m on the subject, you have to watch for word alliances that are just downright unholy. Just a couple of words left to themselves can band together to make havoc or sacrilege. It’s no secret there have been many times in history where words left alone too long united into books and started bloody wars that took the lives of millions. Who would have ever thought those cute little words possessed so much power. But they do have it and when aligned just right, they can be terrible. Most often, they bring life and health and joy to people; then just like that, with a little shift of the wind, they unleash indescribable disaster and flood the world with despair.
Of course, I could go on and on about words and all their pleasures, terrors, and oddities, but so I don’t bore you to death I’ll just finish by telling you about the cliches I mentioned previously.
Cliches are groups of words that have been hanging around each other so long they don’t give vivid meaning to thoughts anymore. These groups became so tiresome everyone just started calling them after their French great-grand word who founded the stereotype. Cliches are not dangerous, per se. Quite the opposite, actually. They’re boring and lifeless. As I’ve said before, they’re tiresome. Unlike playful children or cunning warriors, the cliches have been hanging around on the same porch chewing the fat about the good old days longer than some words have been around. Some of them are older than dirt, I’m sure. Likely, you known some of these type of old braggarts. You know, the older they get the better they were. That’s the cliche for you.
Now, mind you, all by themselves or gathered with other words not associated with their cliche, these same words are surprisingly vivacious. They can play like a child or make war with the best of words. When operating in other contexts, they can still fill us with delight or dread. But if you let them, cliches will be as happy as a clam to sign up for every writing opportunity that comes along.
So that’s it. The next time you want to know what you think about something, put your thoughts down on paper in the form of words. You will be able to see them and contemplate them better that way. It’s like putting them out on a coffee table where you can handle them, rearrange them, flip them over, and play with them until you know what they are. Because how can you make your thoughts clear to someone else if they’re not clear to you first.
Ambrose Bierce said, “Good writing is clear thinking made visible.” If you would like some help writing better prose, consider taking one of my writing courses over at Poiema.