WORD PERFECT
Saturday, February 27, 2021 - daily column #6681
Writing is a craft, skillset, hobby, an avocation, and some days a compulsion – constructive and deconstructive, lost and found, and sometimes just wandering and wondering where I’m going and how I’ll know for sure when I get there.
But I want to tell a story, and tell it better than I’ve done before …
As a scribe, I want to pour molten feeling on pages to etch something into the readers’ brain. Sounds great, but most days, it’s far less inspired and far more work. Call it work, call it hobby-out-of-control. Whatever you call it, I long ago learned the dictionary and thesaurus were my best friends. Tools of the trade in this writing game, as much as pen and paper, and often more important than the ideas themselves, is how to use and choose the words to get that job done.
My tools sit there, waiting every day. Two tabs always open at the top of my computer screen.
Don’t leave home without them.
Every day when it’s third or fourth draft time, polishing the rough work, writing better sentences – adding things, taking things out, reworking and reordering thoughts – it’s time to pause to look for a better word.
For every word?
There is no such thing as a perfect word, but most often, there is a better one, a more accurate one, a less over-used one. Or a simpler one.
If there was such a thing as perfect, what would the point be of trying to write some original perfection?
It would be ludicrous.
I’ve witnessed near-perfection many times in many things I’ve done, seen, or experienced.
I’ve only witnessed two events that deserve the word perfection – two births, two daughters – two lives I helped create. It doesn’t get better than that. Now, back to the writing challenge …
If something is perfect, that implies we could not improve it …
But perfect is such an overused term.
It’s much like awesome, now used as frequently as “did you want fries with that?” because it becomes an overused nothing term – neither distinctive nor inspiring.
The best words inspire pause and awe that stimulate readers to salivate as the words roll over their tongue.
Some brands, slogans, song lyrics, and poetry do that – matching word and sentiment so a phrase can amaze, paint a picture, describe a feeling and transport the reader emotionally and geographically to a place they’ve been or wish they’d been.
To write something and like the result is a good thing.
To rework it, so it becomes both shorter and more powerful, replace ordinary words with better words, and then replace better words with greater words – and occasionally, with the perfect word; it’s a not rapid pleasurable release of neuromuscular tensions at the height of arousal, but it’s close to that, so sure, think that and I’ll point readers in the right direction.
They never have, but then we’re all this same game, are we not, where children try to impress parents, and parents to impress their children, and men try to impress their lovers.