Observations and Insights on the Nature of Things

By Eve West Bessier, Poet Laureate Emerita of Silver City and Grant County, New Mexico



The Spanish are forward thinking people. I say this because of the convenient and helpful assistance in the Spanish written language of the inverted question mark and exclamation point at the start of a sentence requiring such punctuation at its close.

What good is a question mark placed solely at the finish line of a sentence? How shall we know how to run the race? Well, you may be thinking, there are indicators: what, where, when, why, and who to name a few. While sentences that start off with such words virtually scream the interrogative, other sentences may be more subtle. Sarcasm, for instance, is deceptive. “So, you think everything is hunky-dory?”

If the case for the inverted question mark is perhaps a tad flimsy, let me assure you that the case for the inverted exclamation point is weighty enough.

Let me start with the disclaimer that the exclamation point in certain situations is blatantly obvious. The statement, “Help!” is difficult to imagine on the page without the exclamation mark. If the mark is omitted, the victim is left with little hope of rescue, but it’s a one-word sentence and I can see the exclamation point coming before I even get past the “H.”

What about longer sentences, or ones with more ambiguous emotional content? For the sake of argument, let’s say I’m doing a cold reading of a script for a film audition. How do I choose the needed inflection and emotional demeanor in a sentence if I don’t know from the start whether my character is mildly annoyed or truly livid? The courtesy and utility of finding the inverted exclamation point at the start of a sentence makes for dramatic preparedness.

Yes, I do agree that the power of the exclamation mark has been severely weakened by over use. Popular culture, especially as promoted by the advertising, film and music industries, has elevated discourse and language to such an incessantly exclamatory height that the exclamation point has become more like salt than cayenne. Add to this the non-judicious use of the four-letter word, F@#*! Though still banned from broadcasting in the US, the F word in popular speech has become little more than filler, replacing less demonstrative syllables such as, “um.” By the way, a speaker is docked points at any Toastmasters meeting for the use of “um” and other such fillers, as they are seen as distractions without merit for meaning or emphasis. I have not personally witnessed the use of the F word as filler at a Toastmasters meeting and can only speculate at its effect, humorous or otherwise. Nonetheless, I’d still appreciate advanced notice that emotions are heightened.

Punctuation is the traffic signage of language posted to assist the conveyance of meaning. The period is clearly a STOP sign, and the comma a YIELD. The question mark indicates CAUTION. Perhaps there is a construction zone requiring a slower pace or greater alertness? Perhaps the road is suddenly more winding or dangerously steep, or perhaps there is black ice ahead? The exclamation mark could be a ONE WAY sign. Better to know this before you turn onto the street in the wrong direction! Or perhaps it’s a DEAD END sign, hardly helpful if posted only at the end of a street that ends in a thousand-foot drop from a cliff.

Without the inverted exclamation point at the start of a lengthy sentence, I may find myself slamming on the brakes with a screech, barely missing a road block only to realize in hindsight that I’ve had four state troopers with red lights flashing and sirens blaring tailing me for who knows how long.

¡That’s a situation I’d like to avoid! ¿Sabes?



Speaking of advanced notice … I will be taking a vacation from the blog in April.



Scroll down to About The Author for more information and check out Eve’s website at: www.jazzpoeteve.com

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A monthly blog by Eve West Bessier, Poet Laureate Emerita of Silver City and Grant County, New Mexico. Look for a new post every 1st Saturday. (Free stock photo)

A tangled pile of clipped grapevines takes up a corner of Teresa’s driveway, the harvest of her fall pruning. This morning, she is teaching me how to make holiday wreaths from the vines.

“Just pull one out,” she says. “You might want to try a long one first. It’s easier.”

Wearing gardening gloves, I tug on the thick end of a vine, trying to free it from the pile. It gives me resistance like a big fish on the hook. Suddenly, it comes free from the tangle, swirling through the air like a bullwhip.

“Whoa!” I shout. “Watch out, it’s a live one!”

We laugh, our breath condensing in the chilled air.

The vine is umber brown at the end where I hold it. It tapers to a raw sienna and then to a thin, still-green tip.

“That’ll make an interesting weave,” Teresa says. The strong, tanned features of her face breaking into one of her generous smiles. She’s wearing a bright red sweater, the only touch of primary color in the pastel day. The clouds are the kind of blue-gray that whispers rain. The bare trees profile against the pewter sky like strokes from the brush of Rembrandt van Rijn. The fragile light today reminds me of Holland where I was raised.

“Just gently bend it over itself like this,” she says, showing me how to begin the weaving. “Leave the ends long on both sides, start in the middle like this. That way you don’t have to pull so much through.”

I twist the long vine around itself, feeling the strength of the plant and testing the limits of its flexibility. It’s easier than I expected. I twist one end through a few times, then begin weaving with the other. There is a peaceful satisfaction in seeing the wreath take shape.

Teresa already has a pile of wreaths ready to take along. I’ll help her make a few more on this last afternoon together. She’s moving away tomorrow.

I wonder about our lives, how they too twist around each other like these vines. Our friendship is relatively new. We’ve known each other less than a year, but good talks and long walks have laid the groundwork for trust and candidness. The weaving together of our stories becoming like a vine wreath adorned with flowers of affection and ribbons of laughter. A touch of Hallmark in that metaphor, perhaps, but genuine nonetheless.

Teresa is an artist at making wreaths. She gave me one for the Thanksgiving holiday, which always falls on the week of my birthday, and every seven years, exactly on my birthday. Her gift is a bright, sunny wreath with yellow, pink and fuchsia colored dried flowers accented with the surprise of red jalapenos. The peppers are the best part. She knows I like them. They are symbols to me of my love of Latin music, salsa dancing and spicy cuisine.

I watch her for a moment, admiring her confident movements. She’s making a very large, thick wreath from a vine with lots of spiraling offshoots. Selling decorative wreaths at farmer’s markets will provide part of her income in her new home base, where she will also work part-time for a nursery.

My vine is wrapping around itself nicely, although it’s not forming a perfect circle. I finish and tuck the ends into the twisted pieces. I lay the wreath atop the finished pile and fish for another long stretch of vine. This new vine is thicker than the first. I like the way the fresh green ends juxtapose with the dark, almost purple thicker vine.

I’m thinking that living a life is like creating a wreath, experiences wrapped around experiences, all twisted together, emotions around emotions. The feelings I am experiencing today, I have experienced many times before. Some originate from events long passed in the linear sense of time, but they still present in the cyclical sense. Our life lessons spiral around to greet us again and again, until we understand whatever it is we need to learn, and integrate that wisdom on a deeper level.

Wreaths are like photographs too, capturing a fresh moment and preserving it. When we look at an old photograph, the colors are faded. The clothing and hairstyles are humorously out of date, and everyone looks impossibly young. The day on which the photo was taken is a distant and fragmented memory. Yet, the photo serves as a testimony to something once green, blooming in the moment. It holds the power to cheer us, or bring us tears.

Tomorrow, when Teresa is on the road to her new home and community, I’ll look at the tropical colored wreath she made for me. It will hold the details of this afternoon in all its early December splendor, not an ounce of tropical color anywhere, except for Teresa’s sweater. I’ll feel close to her even as I start to miss her, and I’ll be glad that she is a weaver of wreaths and stories.

I wish all of you a wondrous, joyful holiday season. Make space for happiness. Weave together precious memories, and if you have the inclination, make a vine wreath to adorn your holiday home. See you in the brand new year!

Scroll down to About The Author for more information and check out Eve’s website at: www.jazzpoeteve.com

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A new monthly blog by Eve West Bessier, Poet Laureate Emerita of Silver City and Grant County, New Mexico. Look for a new post every 1st Saturday. (Photos by author.)

My heart moves like water, finding low ground, heading for the open sea.
There is no analgesic for grief, but at least physical suffering
Ends when it ends and leaves only a haunting refrain, no sensation.

Washing the wound is an ancient practice, whether to remove old blood or old trauma. Water is a shaman substance, an elemental creator spirit, a firm believer in evolution.

I am addicted to water. Not that I have a choice. Without water I would shrivel up, crack open, hallucinate, perish. Without water all that remains of me is a small mound of ash and psychic debris, nothing for my clothes or my soul to cling to. No dreams in the nighttime. No hands to wave goodbye or shake hello. What little weight I have in the world comes from the water I contain.

I am pulled to water by the insistent gravity of its mass, a mass so powerful as to outweigh battleships. Water floats cargo holds of tonnage in tuna, oil, or Toyotas by mere displacement.

When I feel removed from myself, I need submersion. A sandy pool at a natural mineral spring or a generous monsoon downpour are best, but I will settle for a cool shower.

My heart moves like water, against the window panes of past scenes.
Feelings running together as drops collide and coalesce, oily and translucent
Until the boundaries of memory and reality soften and become malleable.

I have an insatiable need to be satiated with the miracle molecule. I seek out a deep swimming hole in the bend of the Gila River, where I swim full force, the strong current holding me in place as I watch a black hawk soar in the cobalt sky and hear the river’s roar greeting me with its incessant song of water over stone. I smell the intoxicating ionization, taking in oxygen so pure and lacerated from hydrogen as to be an elixir. I am chilled awake to the core.

Or, I glide over a lake’s slick skin in my lime green kayak, birch paddles cupping sensuous billows and creating swirling eddies. In the slime and dust of its depths, I see sinuous weeds caress rainbow trout scales, pollywogs and darting insect larvae. Sunlight reflects back into my eyes like Fourth of July sparklers, or crepuscular rays so psychedelic as to mesmerize.

My heart moves like water, collecting in rock depressions and soft earth.
Love can be both poignant and indefinable, a music of inaudible notes.

I want to know water viscerally, like an embryo knows amniotic fluid. I want to remember everything clearly. The agony, the ecstasy. The ordinary, the extraordinary.

Water seeks out low ground but without humility. If you think you are on sure footing, even the smallest amount of water will prove your security premature. Water on the move will sweep you off your feet faster than love.

My heart moves like water, dragging old skins from mountains downstream,
Carrying debris and soil with uncompromising force and stubbornness.
Depositing the past into the present, agate and aggregate alike, gem and clod.

Water agitated and enraged by wind devastates entire cities and coastlines, submerging everything: toaster ovens, televisions, toothpaste, feather pillows, leather boots, photo albums, rosaries, under a sludge of mud, oil, grit, waste and regret.

Water is as easily bully as healer. Trapped in its own cyclic evolutions, water is as much captive as captivating. Still, water on the move will sweep you clean of your heart’s agony faster than time.

My heart moves like water, the way tears adhere to their own salts and slip
With gravity over cheeks, pooling in pores and at the edges of parted lips.
When grief reaches its source, sunlight evaporates pain and water is free
To drift to the mountains again.

Scroll down to About The Author for more information and check out Eve’s website at: www.jazzpoeteve.com

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A monthly blog by Eve West Bessier, Poet Laureate Emerita of Silver City and Grant County, New Mexico

In Paris, the famous Arc de Triomphe is currently completely wrapped in a silvery grey fabric as a tribute to the late installation artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude.

The arc of the Write On! blog is also a wrap, as this post is the final edition.

But don’t worry, I’m not leaving you blogless in Silver City, or in Seattle for that matter. On the first Saturday in November, I will start a brand new monthly blog called, The View from Here.

Meanwhile, Write On! Coaching and Prompts for Writers is being crafted into a lovely book. I will let you know when it hits the virtual and actual bookshelves.

So, let’s see if we can wrap up this year of writing and writing advice in a shimmery, silver lining.

In this closing chapter, so to speak, I want to talk about the arc in the context of writing. You have likely heard the term story arc, and if you went to high school in the United States, you will have learned about the five-paragraph formula of the expository essay. That formula is itself an arc. It begins with an introductory paragraph, which includes your thesis statement. Then come the three or more paragraphs supporting the thesis statement with facts, figures and corroborations. Finally, there is a concluding paragraph which confidently upholds the validity of that original thesis statement based on the evidence presented.

Expository essay writing is dreaded by many and adored by some for pretty much the same reason. That formula. There is a symmetry involved that appeals. It’s a rigid platform based on values that brilliantly uphold scientific research, but it can be limiting in more creative pursuits.

I was a social science academic for over two decades and wrote a plethora of research reports within that organizational framework. However, if you’ve been reading my monthly offerings, you know that I am not much a fan of formulaic writing when it comes to creative work. Nonetheless, there is something to be said for structure. In any genre, writing works best when it has a clear beginning, middle and end. Even if these components are not laid out in chronological order, they need to be present. Writing moves us most effectively if there is an arc of both storyline and emotional development from the introduction of characters and events through to the final revelation and denouement.

All of this order is not just some archaic idea, no pun intended, carried forward by crusty profs in ivy-enshrouded brick buildings. It’s a genuine law of physics involved. We all know about that useful bell curve, right? Especially with the pandemic still not completely behind us, we are well-versed in the statistical reality of numbers having this predictable path of increase and decrease that creates a bulge in the middle. While not much in my life has ever situated itself comfortably in that middle, as I tend to be an outlier, the middle is fat because that’s where most of reality tends to hang out.

I mention this because a bell curve is a nice way to visualize an arc. Any piece of writing can be assisted by the elegance of this statistical graph. You have to start somewhere, go somewhere, and end up somewhere. Even if where you end up is statistically speaking where you started, there needs to be a catharsis involved. I personally love arcs that circle back to their beginnings, bringing enlightenment to something that was dark at the start. Let’s hope that will be the case for our collective experience within the arc of the pandemic. Only time will tell.

Speaking of bringing some light to the darkness, all of the writing skills you have honed by reading and working with the seventeen Write On! posts over this past year have supported you in creating your own Arc de Triomphe. Not as a monument to the past but as a structure for the future, and that’s worth celebrating.

This month, I offer you the parting gift of honoring your process and your words. You are all bonafide writers in your own right! Go forth and cover your arcs in shining silver sheets of meaning. Be your own Cristo-style installation artist and place your artistic expressions out in the field of life as brilliant white lines of language flowing in the breeze! How’s that for a monumental sendoff?! Pun intended.

Here’s your final writing prompt. Write a prose poem in the concrete form. That means write a piece of prose in the spirit of poetry that creates a physical shape on the page. For this experience, use the shape of the actual Arc de Triomphe in Paris. This is easier to do with pencil and paper than on the computer screen, though you can transfer it to bits and bytes afterwards. Draw the outline with both the inner and outer edges of the Arc de Triomphe on a sheet of paper. Then start your piece of writing inside the bottom of the left base and work your way up over the top and back down to the bottom of the right side. You will be writing inside of a physical arc, so I am willing to bet the process will intuitively create an arc in your writing, both in content and emotion. Have fun with this! See you on the flip side!

With gratitude for your interest and participation in Write On!



Scroll down to About The Author for more information and check out Eve’s website at: www.jazzpoeteve.com

The post Write On! L’Arc de Triomphe! appeared first on Southwest Word Fiesta™.

A monthly blog by Eve West Bessier, Poet Laureate Emerita of Silver City and Grant County, New Mexico

This month, I’m offering a little nostalgia and a few organizational tips to help keep all of our ducks in a row. We all know how easily those ducks can run amuck!

First, the nostalgia.

When I was getting my Bachelor of Arts in English/Creative Writing (1978-82), I started out using a manual Smith Corona typewriter. In my third year, I upgraded to a portable electric. The brand name escapes me at the moment, but it was a slick beige machine, possibly Italian, Olivetti? It came in a carrying case, so could be stored away while not in use. Of course, it was constantly in use. The nifty font ball spun around to locate the individual letters and slammed up against the ink ribbon with a fury, more efficient than the metal strikers on other manual typewriters, by a mile. You could also change out the fonts by purchasing other font balls. Corrections still required white-out fluid and copies still required carbon paper.

Sending a document, in those days, meant folding it, stuffing it into an envelope and putting it in the US mail, unless you were near enough to hand-deliver it to the recipient. Organizing and keeping track of your paper documents required putting them into Manila file folders with stick on labels, and then into metal filing cabinets that contained Pendaflex folders with plastic-covered labels. Those Manila folders, by the way, are called Manila because the rough, buff-colored paper was originally made from the Manila hemp ropes used by sailing vessels, and that hemp was grown in the Philippines. Interesting fact. I used to have quite a few of those folders in tall, heavy filing cabinets in my office. Now, I have no filing cabinets and maybe just one pack of Manila folders, somewhere.

When I went to graduate school (1988-90) I was given the use of a university computer. It was an IBM and used MS DOS. Remember those? A black screen with either burnt sienna or sickly green letters. Luckily, mine were burnt sienna. Files were saved onto floppy discs, which were genuinely floppy and the size of a sandwich. Towards the end of my graduate school days, I bought my own Mac Classic, on which I did my thesis. That cute tiny screen did not do wonders for my eyesight. Files were still saved on floppy discs but they were a quarter of the size and housed in small square plastic cases, a smart improvement over their vulnerable predecessors stored in thin paper envelopes. All of this personal history is pre-internet, by the way.

So, that’s it for the nostalgia. Now, on to the organizational tips.

Our current computers make creating and saving our work a breeze, but as a result, we can generate a plethora of files in the blink of an eye. Keeping track of them can be a challenge. We now have multiple electronic versions of our work in various states of editorial progress. As we revise, we create more and more drafts. Keeping track of which draft is the most recent takes vigilance. Some of my poems, essays and short stories have traveled with me for decades from one computer to another, through multiple softwares. It gets complex.

Here are a few suggestions that can help keep your ducks in a row, and make them easier to spot as they swim around in the big pond of your hard drive.

Always, always, always put the current date, including the year, in the file name of any document you save.

Never, never, never name a file, “Most Recent Version” without adding the current date. I’ve been guilty of omitting the date on so-named documents, which never leads to good ends. Especially do not name a file “Final,” without adding the date. I am a relentless editor and will often update a “Final” file, making that first “Final” no longer final.

You can find data on a computer file to see the date it was created or last opened. In Word, Libre Office and Open Office you can do this by going to Properties in the File menu. Needing to do so on any regular basis, however, is a drag and a waste of your valuable writing time. Why not just add the date in the file name? You can then differentiate the versions and find the most recent one. Voilá.

When I’m working on a book-length or other long project, I use an organizational strategy I call the Matryoshka dolls (Russian nesting dolls) technique. It’s not a perfect analogy, but I like the visual aspect of it. Feel free to try it, if you don’t already have a strategy you are happy using.

I create a mother folder named for the project’s title. That’ the mother doll, inside of which will fit all of the other nesting dolls. Inside of the main folder, I place a Work in Progress folder, which holds the most current drafts of all of the documents I am still working to improve. Inside of that folder there is another folder titled, Completed Drafts. Onlyfinished pieces go in there. Inside of that folder, is the Final Project folder, into which I lovingly place the final draft of the entire project as one document. I always create a back-up copy of that final document. Everything inside of all of these folders gets date stamped, por supuesto!

If you are sending your work out for potential publication, here are some organizational tips to keep in mind, a whole other raft of ducks, as they are termed when in the water. Most of us now use the submission platforms chosen by the publications themselves, the most common being Submittable. I recommend that you also keep your own log of submissions. Record the name of the piece, the genre, the journal or publication to which you have sent it, the date of your submission, and the outcome, when you receive it. Submission platforms are terrific, but not infallible, believe me.

Some writers insist that their old 1936 Underwood manual typewriter is still the best tool for their craft. Most of these writers are almost as old as their typewriters, though there are some younger converts to the old-fashioned ways. There is something to be said for the rhythmic sound of the keystrokes and the feel of the keyboard. Having an actual piece of paper rolled under the bar allows you to relish pulling it out with a flourish when it is covered in text. Plus, that page of work won’t vanish into thin air due to an unfortunate click on the computer keyboard in the wrong place, or a hard drive crash. Those manila folders with their neat little file labels are pretty nifty and the sturdy metal file cabinets can give your office substantial bulk.

While there is a certain romance to the old ways, I don’t miss those messy ink ribbons, or having to use SASE (self-addressed stamped envelopes) to submit work. Editing was a chore when you couldn’t cut and paste without actually cutting and pasting with scissors and glue. I did a lot of that during graduate school to make sense out of my mountains of data. It was time consuming and left me with sticky fingers.

Personally, I’m happier with my iMac, wireless keyboard and trackpad, but to each her own.

Here’s our writing prompt for this month.

Write a brief history of your own experience with the tools of our trade. Explore with nostalgia the evolution of your writing practice from the physical world of pen and paper to the information age of bits and bytes. If you are not old enough to have experienced the writing life before the advent of computers because you were already at a computer keyboard when you were three, write a piece describing what it might have been like in the dark ages before technology.

Plus, here’s a housekeeping assignment. Take a look at your writing files. Make sure they are dated. If not, add the date to the most current drafts. That is, if you can figure out which ones are the most current.

Good luck and happy duck herding!


Scroll down to About The Author for more information and check out Eve’s website at: www.jazzpoeteve.com

The post Write On! Ducks in a Row! appeared first on Southwest Word Fiesta™.

A monthly blog by Eve West Bessier, Poet Laureate Emerita of Silver City and Grant County, New Mexico

In this edition, I will talk about how to write engaging and true to life characters. I will also address some pitfalls to avoid.

Even if you’re writing a memoir, in which the characters are real people and you are the protagonist, putting those characters onto the page is more tricky than you might expect. When you are making up characters from scratch for a piece of fiction, the plot thickens. Literally!

Let me begin by mentioning that most stories are either plot-driven or character-driven. That means the storylines are either primarily moved forward by the agenda of the plot, or by the personal evolution of the main character or characters. Some stories are moved forward by a blending of plot and character motivation. Those are my favorites! The magic in this blending is that the characters are tossed into an initial plot scenario and then develop themselves and the trajectory of the plot as the story moves forward. I’ll talk more about this a little later.

While there are always exceptions, and modern stories are shifting definitions and boundaries all the time, genre fiction tends to be plot-driven, while literary fiction tends to be character-driven. Memoirs and biographies are by nature character-driven, though they are about revealing the overall arc in the plot of a life. In all cases, however, strong characters are essential to engaging your readers.

There are four primary aspects to consider in building a character. In order of importance they are: Action, Speech, Thoughts, and Appearance.

Appearance is the most simple and straight-forward to write, so many authors will begin building their characters by describing their physical appearance. That’s fine, even recommended, but watch out for the tendency to put all of your marbles into that one jar. Actually, let me turn that metaphor inside-out. Be careful that you don’t spend so much energy creating the pretty jar, that you forget to fill it up with colorful marbles!

Of course, it’s important for your readers to be able to visualize your characters, but their physical appearance is only the surface. True, a character’s physique and how they dress can reveal aspects of their personality and values, but if there is nothing deeper than the Prada pumps or the flannel shirt, the character will lack dimension and appear flat. Although, if worn in combination, Prada and flannel would make for a quirky first impression.

What gives a character depth, however, is not the first impression they make. It’s the way they behave, what they say and what they think.

As writers, our job is to reveal our characters in such a way that they walk off the page into life. They are the main vehicles for the storyline, without them we have no way to show the story, we can only tell the story. Surely, you’ve heard the old writer’s axiom, “Show don’t tell.” Yes, I have, thank you very much, and stop calling me Shirley!

Let me offer a couple of examples here. Let’s say you have a story in which a woman discovers that the man she is dating is actually a private detective hired by her father to keep an eye on her. How might this revelation affect the character? Here is what you get if you only tell the reader how she feels.

Example #1:

Sharon was livid! How could her father be such a cad? To make things worse, she’d been enjoying her dates with Jason. Now, that would have to come to an abrupt end.

Okay. I now know that Sharon is angry and disappointed, but those four sentences just don’t do it for me. I don’t feel, and therefore can’t empathize, with Sharon’s anger or disappointment. Are you with me on this?

Let’s see what happens if we add some action and dialogue into the scene.

Example #2:

Sharon slammed her cell phone onto the desk.
“Shit!” she exclaimed, both in reaction to that last call, and to having possibly ruined her brand new iPhone.
She picked the phone up again. It seemed fine.
She scrolled to recent calls and punched the number for her mother.
“Mom? Did you know about this?”
“About what, Honey?”
“Don’t Honey me! Dad hired some jerk to spy on me.”
“He’s just worried about you, Dear. Since the abduction, he just wants to be sure you’re safe.”
“Safe?! Safe?! You think dating a guy, whom I really liked by the way, and finding out he’s a hired detective makes me feel safe?!”
Sharon hung up, tossed the phone onto the couch and screamed.

Okay, now I’m starting to experience Sharon’s rage and to feel some empathy for her situation. This is just a snippet of dialogue, just a hint at character, yet it already has more dimension than in example #1. Plus, it’s like a fishing line tossed out to hook the reader’s attention and interest. You want the reader to wonder what will happen next.

I find that once I place a character into a situation that involves tension, the character naturally tries to defuse that tension. How they approach this gives insight into their personality and values.

If I introduce a problem into a storyline, the characters will try to solve it. My advice is to hang out with your characters as they deal with the problem and listen closely. Trust that they know themselves better than you do, as yet, and follow the trail of their actions, words and thoughts.

I know what you’re going to say. “But I’m the one who is writing their actions, words, and thoughts! How can I follow them, when I’m creating them?”

I know, it seems oxymoronic, but consider this. When we are doing our job as writers at its finest level, we are not creating the characters. They are creating themselves on the page through us. If we can wrap your heads around that concept, we are well on our way to making the writing experience one heck of an adventure!

If you insist on using some dry formulaic method to write characters and plot, writing can quickly become a real drag. Yes, that is perhaps just my opinion. After all, there are a plethora of books out there happy to provide you with formulas a plenty. However, I am not alone in having discovered that trusting the characters is the best way to breathe life into them. It’s also fun and exciting.

Hemingway once said, and I paraphrase, that after he placed his characters into the story, he just had to hold onto the reins and try not to fall off the galloping horse. The characters gave him one hell of a ride! I’ve experienced that elation, and when it happens, I can hardly type fast enough to keep up with the galloping horse. I have no idea how Hemingway managed it on a manual typewriter.

Don’t be alarmed if the characters begin to change the storyline from your original concept of it. They will do this. Don’t stop them. They know what they’re up to, and you would be well-advised to trust their instincts because those instincts come from your own deep wisdom and well of knowledge about life.

Believe me, if you’ve been on the planet for more than a couple of decades, you have some deep wisdom and a well of knowledge about life. Deep breath. Trust your own truth and let it shine through your characters.

To get started, and to give you some ground, here’s a writing exercise to help with building characters before you start writing them into your story. It’s the writing prompt for this month and has two parts.

Part One:

When I was (briefly) a stage actor, I needed to get into character, as they say in the theater. I prepared myself for this by asking my character a lot of questions, off stage. What’s your favorite song and when did you first hear it? What’s your idea of a perfect day? What bothers you the most about your parents? When you were seven, what did you like to do after school? I let my character talk to me about things that were not in the script. Let your characters talk to you about things that you aren’t planning to include in the storyline. You’ll get a deeper understanding of their inner workings. Don’t worry if this exercise gives you pages and pages of information. You won’t be putting all of that into the story. In fact, please don’t put all of that into the story! This is just homework that will help you to get to know your character.

Part Two:

Once you’ve done the first exercise, you will be ready to give your character a trial run. Make sure you give them a good solid, interesting name. Dress them up as they want to be dressed. Have them engage in a conversation with another character, or with you. Give them a problematic situation and see what they do, say, think.

Here are a few tips for this process.

Watch out that your character isn’t just a carbon copy of yourself, unless you’re writing your memoir.

Liberate yourself from thinking that your main character needs to be likable. The protagonist of a story does need to be someone the readers will want to see succeed, but it is more engaging to watch the main character overcome initial character flaws and poor behavior choices in order to grow and eventually reach success. Don’t make the main character too goody-goody. Not even if you’re writing for children, especially if you’re writing children.

Remember that your story will also need engaging antagonists, villainous or just darkly misguided characters who try to derail your protagonist’s efforts at success. You can, of course, choose to make your protagonist villainous or darkly misguided. That can be an interesting twist.

My advice to you is to not get bogged down or too serious in this exercise. Play around, be light-hearted in your work. Create a file folder for each of these two exercises, so you can save lots of drafts. Don’t edit the drafts. Give your editorial brain a vacation, or at least a very long lunch break. If you find that you’re not having fun anymore, give yourself a very long lunch break! Come back to it later.

As always, I wish you all the best. Write on!


Scroll down to About The Author for more information and check out Eve’s website at: www.jazzpoeteve.com.

The post Write On! What a Character! appeared first on Southwest Word Fiesta™.

A monthly blog by Eve West Bessier, Poet Laureate Emerita of Silver City and Grant County, New Mexico

Let’s talk about Point of View

If you’ve hung around creative writers for even a few hours, you have likely heard someone use the term, point of view, sometimes abbreviated as POV.

Point of view is all about perspective and voice. Who is narrating and what type of lens are they using to capture the story? Is it a selfie? A close-up, zoomed-in shot? A wide-angle panorama?

You probably learned about point of view in high school, and were told that there are four types. I’m adding a fifth, which is recognized though rarely used, but has a special significance for Americans. Since tomorrow is our Independence Day celebration, it seems appropriate to include it here.

Recognize this quote from the preamble of the United States Constitution? It’s written in first-person plural point of view.

“We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

So, there are five points of view. I will provide a brief introduction to each and address some salient details that will help you use them to your advantage. I’ll include a brief description, an example sentence, and a few pros and cons for each point of view. All quoted examples are my own creations unless otherwise noted.

First-person Singular. Most of us wander around in our life experiences solidly in the first-person singular. This point of view will have the pronoun, I generously sprinkled throughout. Example: “I poured myself a bowl of Coco Puffs, then realized I was out of milk.” This point of view reverses the camera lens so that you can take a selfie.

This point of view is not limited to memoir writing, however. First-person singular can be used in a fictional narrative where the story is told by either the protagonist, or by another character who is experiencing the events of the story or novel and relaying them from their own perspective using the first-person voice.

This is a very intimate and personal voice. It can bring readers deeply into the narrative. When a reader sees the word I in a narrative, their brain tends to associate closely with the word, thus creating a bond between reader and author that is unique to this point of view. There is a vulnerable quality to this voice which can build trust, but beware.

The vulnerability of this voice can shift into a confessional tone and turn maudlin. This is especially problematic in memoirs, but can also leak into fictional narratives. Like a selfie on your cell phone, the lens may distort reality as you, or the main character of the fictional story, can’t quite get far away enough from the lens to get a good angle on the shot. Readers may initially be drawn into the narrative by the intensity and closeness of the first-person voice, but just like a distorted selfie, the portrait can become a bit disturbing. If disturbing is what you’re going for, then great. If not, then be aware.

First-person Plural is rarely seen, but offers an antiquated and lofty feel to a narrative. “We lived in abject poverty, but we were mostly unaware of our suffering, as we tended to imbibe the whiskey and ale in generous portions.”

You can also use this point of view to add a more omniscient view to the narrative. “Madame Boudoir was having an affair with her landlord, a perhaps foolhardy arrangement, as her thriving bordello might find its employees and patrons on the street if things went awry in Madame’s own boudoir.”

This point of view might be fun to use in a shorter piece, or to sprinkle into a longer one, but can quickly become harder to manage than an iron anvil in a novel-length work.

As I’ve already addressed by quoting the Preamble to the United States Constitution, this point of view can be a powerful voice in legal documents and statements. Academic writing can utilize this voice as well in articles describing the results of scientific studies when the research team addresses those results as a group. “We have found that smiling increases the happiness quotient in most people.”

Second-person is a rarity the welcome of which will wear thin quickly, and wear out your reader soon thereafter. This is a narrative voice that addresses the reader directly as you. Here’s an example.

“You walk into the darkened bedroom, searching for a light switch but finding none. You smell something foul and your instincts tell you to run, but you are curious.” This can set up an intriguing ambience and could be used as an introductory point of view to a piece, but you can see how this might begin to irritate the reader after a while. You can see that, can’t you?

Of course, the second-person is perfect for “How To” essays and books in which you are telling the reader how to do something. “You need to make sure the electricity to the room is turned off at the fuse box before you rewire the light fixtures.”

Third-person Limited is the most common point of view for fiction narratives and journalistic writing. In fiction, the narrative voice talks about what a character is experiencing from a distance, but does not reveal anything beyond what that character knows.

In fiction, this voice narrates without personal involvement or opinion. “Margaret carried the cheese platter out to the patio.” In journalism, it stays objective in its description. “The gathering crowd threatened to close down the hamster meat processing plant.”

Third-person Omniscient is a very popular point of view in fictional narratives. It allows the writer to convey information to the reader about the story or characters while keeping the characters themselves in the dark as to their destinies.

Here’s the same sentence I provided as an example above, but with the omniscience added. “Margaret carried the cheese platter out to the patio, unaware that the afternoon rain had caused the redwood deck to become extremely slippery.”

This point of view is not the best choice for mystery stories, as the narrator could accidentally give away the “who done it.”

For general fiction, however, this point of view is extremely useful. As the author, you can add details and depth to the story that your characters themselves cannot provide through their dialogue or their thoughts portrayed on the page because they simply don’t have access to the information, but you do!

Use this point of view with some restraint. You don’t want the narrative voice to sound like the voice of God. Unless, of course, the narrator of your story is the voice of God.

There you have it! Now it’s time to play with point of view.

Here’s a writing prompt. Tell a brief story from your own life experience using first-person singular. Keep it no longer than two or three paragraphs. Then tell the same story using each of the other points of view. If you’re feeling adventurous, tell the story using more than one point of view within the same narrative. Switching point of view within a single narrative can be intriguing and illuminating, but like rubbing your tummy while patting your head, it takes considerable focus and coordination! Have fun!

Scroll down to About The Author for more information and check out Eve’s website at: www.jazzpoeteve.com.

The post Write On! Point and Shoot! appeared first on Southwest Word Fiesta™.

A monthly blog by Eve West Bessier, Poet Laureate Emerita of Silver City and Grant County, New Mexico

This month’s post is an excerpt from the 2020 publication, Deep Down & Dirty Writing Secrets, edited by EJ Rawlings. The article posted here is the chapter I contributed to this anthology for writers, with permission from the editor. I hope you will enjoy it, and do check out the book, which contains great advice for writers on many topics by several local authors. I will provide a link below.

In this article, I will present six points on how to encourage the spiritual in your writing. These points come out of my own experience as a writer, a reader and a spiritual seeker. I hope that they will be useful to you.

Before I delve into those points, I need to make a distinction between three types of spiritual writing. The first is writing that is by its very nature spiritual, such as a book of prayer. The second is writing that speaks about the spiritual in an expository way, such as an essay about metaphysics. These two are easy to identify as spiritual writing, but my guess is that you are more interested in the third type. I will be talking about writing that embodies the spiritual but does so in a less direct, yet thoroughly organic manner. This type of writing can be of any genre, on any topic and probably won’t even mention the word spiritual, which after all can mean so many different things to different people.

For our purposes here, let me define spiritual as anything that relates to an individual’s spirit or soul, anything that speaks to a collective higher consciousness or universal energy and anything that promotes the awareness of either of these. Combined, all of these can be encouraged in our writing and all of these together make up what I would call spirituality.

Spirituality is a lifestyle rather than a fashion statement, although mass media might tease us into thinking otherwise. I have found that the spiritual doesn’t always poke its enlightened head into places or situations in which you might expect to find it. It often shows its most potent aspects in places and situations where you least expect to find it, and that is the kind of revelation you want in your writing.

So, let’s delve into those six points.

1. Spiritual practice. In order to encourage the spiritual in your writing, it’s essential to encourage the spiritual in your daily life through some form of regular practice. A spiritual practice is foundational. Meditation, prayer, reading inspirational texts, learning to breathe deeply, doing yoga, taking walks in the forest, being of service to others are all wonderful spiritual practices.

You have no doubt found your own best fit for centering, but let me remind you that daily journaling and writing from the heart are also a spiritual practice. That’s good news because it means your writing practice itself can be a spiritual practice that encourages the spiritual in your writing. That’s a very nifty loop! In daily practice, spiritual depth comes into writing through authenticity of presence, through genuinely being there for your work and for yourself, day by day. When it comes to spirituality, there are no tricks or shortcuts. You can’t fake it, you can’t pick it up on the way home. It is the way home!

The most important first step to encouraging the spiritual in your writing is making sure that you write every day, even if it’s just for a few minutes. The discipline of sitting with the blank page or screen and allowing yourself to begin is key. I find that a physical journal and pen create a more welcoming environment for writing on a daily basis, especially as I can write in whatever location I desire, even ones that have no power source except my own imagination.

2. It’s in the details. Let’s get to the nitty gritty, if you can say that about the spiritual, and I think you can and must.

The first impulse to resist is to inject your writing with spiritual terminology. Some of these terms have become so over used that they have taken on a cliché quality. What does ethereal realm really mean? What does it look like, sound like? What makes something sacred, and to whom and why? Just dropping such words into your writing without further description is like trying to airbrush spirituality onto the page.

Your writing will reflect the spiritual when its language originates from the organic heart of your poem, story or essay. Just like a seed germinates under the soil before sprouting into the outer world, the spiritual in your writing needs to germinate and grow from a well-tended, nourished core. The tending is in the details.

For example, let’s say you are writing fiction and you want your readers to know that your protagonist, Janie, is a deeply spiritual twelve-year old. You could write, “Janie is a deeply spiritual twelve-year old.” But what does this actually tell us about Janie? What makes Janie spiritual is found in the details of her behavior. Does Janie volunteer to help at the animal shelter after school every day? Does she talk to trees in the moonlight? Does she read Zen koans before breakfast? Does she write personal prayers to the Universe in her journal and whisper them aloud before she falls asleep each night? Janie’s unique flavor of spirituality is divulged through providing the details of her personal experience.

Get out your magnifying glass and focus on the nitty gritty. Fill in the five Ws. The what, the why, the where, the who and the how. I’m counting that W at the end of how!

If you’ve attended even one writing workshop, you know all about the importance of descriptive details, but did you know that not just the Devil is in the details? The divine is too!

3. Authenticity and balance. If there is one thing your readers feel almost instantly, from your first paragraph or stanza, it’s whether or not you are being genuine. Even if you’re writing a fictional character who is a pathological liar, what you write, especially in dialogue, has to ring true. Authenticity often comes down to your own firm belief in what you are putting on the page. If you are fooling yourself about what’s true, or thinking you might be able to fool your readers, take a deep breath and take out your red editing pencil. Authenticity is a channel for the flow of genuine spirit in your writing.

Telling the spiritual truth doesn’t mean avoiding all things that lurk in the shadows. In fact, it means exposing them. Don’t be afraid of the dark. The spiritual is often associated with light, but darkness is essential for the recognition of light. We all contain both the light and the dark, hopefully in balance like the classic yin-yang emblem. If your writing has no darkness, it has no balance and is not yet fully authentic. The hero’s journey is not a pleasure cruise. It’s a challenging voyage that descends into darkness before it can overcome fear, doubts, various multi-headed monsters and ascend into light.

Your writing needs to address the dark with genuine courage in order to release the light with genuine brilliance.

4. Humility. This point is so vital. When I am reading, nothing turns me off more quickly than hubris on the part of an author. Being steeped on the particulars of a subject, being an authority is a blessing; but being a pompous authority is a curse. I think this is an especially gnarly issue in encouraging the spiritual in our writing. Don’t think that you need to be an authority on the spiritual in order to bring the spiritual into your writing. Who exactly is an authority on the spiritual anyway?

You might say, how about Thích Nhất Hạnh, or Pema Chödrön? What about Depak Chopra, or Oprah, or the dude at the Zen Center who runs the meditation program? And I’d say, sure. We’ve been blessed with some terrific spiritual guides. However, I want to point out that while each of these teachers, (okay, I don’t know the dude at the Zen Center to whom you are referring, so I can’t include him) all recognize that they are the channel of the wisdom, not its source.

Be the channel of wisdom in your writing, and let your characters or the subject of your poems be the channels.

Whatever you do, don’t come off like the bouncer let you into the Club of Higher Consciousness based on your being so darned enlightened compared to the other fools in line. Maybe he just liked the sequins on your bell-bottoms. Or maybe spirituality is more readily found at the jazz dive around the corner. Humility goes a long way in establishing your authenticity.

When you write, don’t be afraid to show your readers that you have lingering questions, even doubts. Spirituality is about seeking answers, but sometimes the answers we find are simply more complex questions. Don’t be afraid to show your readers how your own hero’s journey enriches your experience, or the experience of a fictional character you are writing. Which loops back to details, details, details.

5. Small is spiritual. When I moved to San Francisco from the Netherlands at age seven, I was a devout Catholic child. It was 1967, The Summer of Love. Obviously, I didn’t come to the City to drop acid or drop out. I came because my divorced mom had remarried a man who lived there. And, by the way, neither of them were dropping acid or dropping out either.

The first time I accompanied my new dad on a grocery shopping trip, I was blown away. The interior of the grocery store was an overly bright chasm filled with seemingly endless shelves of food.

In Holland, mom and I bought our bread at the corner bakery, our vegetables at the green grocer or the weekly outdoor market, our meats at the butcher. You get the picture. No mega stores existed.

The thing that mesmerized me the most, however, about this first American shopping experience was the resulting grocery receipt. It was longer than a school ruler, a white ribbon of type in an as yet unintelligible English.

Stay with me, I’m just about to make my point. Earlier that week, I’d saved an empty Chiclets box. Inside of this flat, colorful gum carton, I lovingly placed a postage stamp-sized picture of Jesus. Then I slid the box between the metal frame and the mattress of my bed. There it stayed as a sort of holy relic. I was so impressed with the epic grocery receipt that I folded it and folded it until it also fit into the Chiclet box. It too became my religious artifact.

My point is that this small, pragmatically unimportant gesture was a symbolic act of devotion. That ratty little box stayed in my bed frame for years. It became a metaphor for the treasures stored in my personal heaven and in my innocent Catholic girl’s heart.

That’s the kind of stuff you want to encourage in your writing. Don’t be grandiose. The spiritual dwells in a tiny house.

6. Catch and release. With all of your hard work, you have brought onto the blank page some amazing shiny pearls. You have sought out, waited for, excavated and stretched high to catch those brilliant jewels. But once you publish, you have no control over whether readers will recognize their brilliance. Some of them may think your shiny pearls are just not shiny enough, or they may miss the brilliance entirely, or they may stomp on your work with a bad review, or perhaps even worse, ignore your work all together.

As writers, if we want our words to live beyond the binding of our personal journals, we have to take courage and release whatever wisdom we catch. We all want to protect our tender green sprouts of literary grain. They were germinated in the privacy of our writing cocoon. They contain our deepest inspiration. They expresses our vulnerable hearts. They are filled with all those hard-earned details, details, details. They carry our authentic voice, and we offer them with such humility.

If we decide to publish, our work is sent off into the wide world to be praised, ignored, loved, stepped on, cherished, and a million other fates. It can be hard to release and to recognize that our literary work is its own entity now. When we have encouraged the spiritual in our writing with our earnest integrity, we can trust that letting it go is the best thing we can do. Our work will be fine, no matter what. The gift of release is that our energy is now freed up to focus on our next writing adventure!

Bless you, writer, for having the courage to put it all down on paper, to catch and to release the light! May all of your seeds germinate into robust, generous oaks, pines, maples and aspen.

Scroll down to About The Author for more information and check out Eve’s website at: www.jazzpoeteve.com.

Check out the full anthology, Deep Down & Dirty Writing Secrets, at this direct link. Available in paperback and Kindle eBook editions.

The post Write On! Encouraging the Spiritual in Your Writing appeared first on Southwest Word Fiesta™.

A monthly blog by Eve West Bessier, Poet Laureate of Silver City and Grant County, New Mexico

The word horticulturist applies to someone skilled in growing plants and knowledgeable about caring for their health and vibrance. Horticulture comes from the Latin words hortus, meaning garden; and cultura, meaning cultivation.

I’ve just created a new word, wordiculturist. I am using it to define someone skilled in growing a garden of words and caring for their health and vibrance!

Being a horticulturist takes an elegant balance of vision, grunt work, diligence and patience. Being a wordiculturist takes a balance of each of these as well, especially diligence and patience. Exquisite vision and sweat equity will only take you so far.

Granted, words are less fragile than plants. They can handle a lack of watering or sunlight for longer stretches, but leaving them in a box under the bed or in a tucked away file folder on the computer desktop for too long can stunt them, or outright kill their will to thrive. We need to tend our words as carefully as we tend our gardens.

Lets carry this gardening analogy a bit further into the writing process and see how we can create and perpetuate a thriving garden of words.

Let’s start by looking at poetry. We can think of individual poems as flowers. The seeds of some poems need a long time to germinate before showing up above ground. Other poems are like the tulip or hyacinth, which burst out of their bulbs with gusto when conditions are just right. Some poems are wildflowers that volunteer into the garden as an improvisational free form expression.

As wordiculturist, we can welcome all types of flowers into our written garden, make certain each has enough water and light to prosper. Once they are in full bloom, we can create amazing bouquets and stunning arrangements of them to show off their varied colors and shapes in collections between the front and back covers of books or on display at open mics in coffee houses.

Short stories are like ornamental shrubs that need considerable attention and pruning in order to make their strongest statements. A collection of short fiction is like a topiary garden in which each shrub is carefully shaped to express its own character and meaning, while adding to the overall ambiance of the larger garden which readers can traverse at their own pace along a well-designed pathway.

Essays are like fresh herbs. They can be pungent and slightly bitter, sweet and delicate, or invigoratingly spicy. Their purpose is to awaken the senses and to be thought provoking. Essays can enhance the flavors of everyday life even as herbs enhance the flavors of everyday meals.

Memoirs are the fruits and vegetables of the garden. They nourish us from the rich soil of life experience. They preserve personal and familial history. Memoirs require a strong dose of discipline to grow because they can become two-ton zucchinis if we’re not careful. They can also become the bumper crop of tomatoes that need to be given away or canned posthaste. A well-tended memoir requires some chicken wire fencing, some raised beds of composted soil, and a whole lot of regular weeding. You can’t let this garden run amuck!

The novel in the garden requires a new word, arboriculture which refers to the cultivation of trees and technically also includes scrubs. Short stories are like mini-novels after all. Novels require even more vision, grunt work, diligence and patience than the other genres of writing. They can be saplings for a long time before growing the extensive root system they need to become trees. They can also branch out so quickly that they need to be pruned before they hit Moby Dick length. They often have stages of growth and stages of dormancy, and can take decades to fully mature. Novellas fall between short stories and novels. They are a type of bonsai pine that takes the short story beyond its usual length but doesn’t require the girth or height of the novel tree. But remember that bonsai pines take a special kind of care and artistry to grow. They are exquisite miniatures of their full grown species. They are not to be confused with novels that the author simply couldn’t complete!

Whatever kind of wordiculturist you may be, remember to water your words regularly, pull out the choking weeds of procrastination, prune away non-productive branches, watch for aphids on your roses, those pesky doubts and insecurities! If you are willing to be a diligent wordiculturist, your garden of words will thrive!

A year-round thriving garden always has something new sprouting as something older fades away. Keep planting fresh seeds, even while nurturing young sprouting plants and maintaining the health of more mature plants. It’s a juggling act and requires careful attention.

Maybe your garden is a secret garden and you only grow your words for your own enjoyment. That’s wonderful. Maybe you enjoy inviting friends to see what’s in bloom this month. That’s marvelous too. Maybe your garden feeds and delights a larger community, even a nation or two. How exciting!

Whatever type of wordiculturist you are or aspire to be, remember your best tools are always love and stick-to-it-iveness!

Here’s a writing prompt for this month. Be a wordiculturist by describing the work of an horticulturist. Write a poem or short piece of prose that takes place in a garden; the earthly variety with plants, flowers, shrubs, trees, butterflies and bees. It can be simply a detailed portrait of the garden itself, or it can be about something that occurs in a garden but also includes lots of details about the actual garden. Don’t be afraid to get some dirt under your nails and see eye-to-eye with a pillbug.

Scroll down to About The Author for more information and check out Eve’s website at: www.jazzpoeteve.com.

The post Write On! Wordiculturist! appeared first on Southwest Word Fiesta™.

A monthly blog by Eve West Bessier, Poet Laureate of Silver City and Grant County, New Mexico

I am amused but also a bit pained by the reasons given for a PG rating on films. Here are a few I’ve noticed. “Some language.” What language exactly? Hindi? French? “Brief language.” Do they mean Fruit of the Loom boxers? “Mild language.” Why does that warrant a PG rating? What exactly is that, an ad for camomile tea? “Strong language” is perhaps the most ironic, since the type of language it refers to is actually exceedingly weak language that has lost all meaning and impact. You know what the (bleep) I mean? No, actually, I don’t.

I’ve never seen a film rating for “rich language,” maybe because not much of it still exists. Texting, tweeting and the use of emojis have all contributed to draining the depth and richness from our personal communications. Just read correspondence from the late 1800s and you will be amazed by the eloquence of what was then considered everyday language. Today, rich language is an endangered species.

I’m not advocating that we all strive to sound like Ralph Waldo Emerson, though I personally wouldn’t object, but replacing worn out words with more vibrant ones will go a long way to enriching our language choices.

Finding those more potent words takes intention, attention and time and in our culture we want things now. We like convenience, but convenience leads to the extinction of all kinds of things. Natural resources, a clean and healthy environment, marginalized wild animals and plants, and I’m now adding rich language to the list.

I’m proposing that we, as concerned writers, invest ourselves in the preservation of the endangered species of rich language. We can do this by being more sophisticated about our word choices, using more variety and creating a more epicurean flavor of meaning.

Doing this is a challenge. Communications in our social environment are predominantly acronyms (like LOL and OMG), clever symbols ( : that replace words all together, or graphic emojis like the smiley face made popular in the 1970s, or the cutzie graphics available at the touch of a finger. Maybe images are replacing words, which could be fitting as the first words were glyphs and in many languages still are pictorial. I’m a photographer, so I do love images, but I also love words and I’d hate to see them become extinct.

I completely understand why we are abbreviating our language. It’s a lot easier to text on your smart phone in the few moments available as we juggle school, work, friendships and family. Feeling spunky? Just send a cartoon puppy wagging its tail. Who has time to read a philosophical treatise on twitter anyway and who can write one in fewer than a 140 characters?

Still, we are writers, so when we are not on the phone, let’s actually write. Let’s renew our dedication to keeping rich language alive.

Here’s one simple way to do this. Use the time-tested tool of the thesaurus which is not yet extinct, unlike its linguistically similar buddies the brontosaurus and the stegosaurus. Grab your copy from the bookcase or use an online version, of which there are a plethora. It may seem old-fashioned but it’s a valuable tool to remind us that there are always stronger word choices than the clichéd ones which tend to pop into our heads first. After you’ve written a draft, go back and look at your word choices. Are you using overused words? Do your word choices skirt the surface of meaning rather than delving deeper?

Using tools like a dictionary, a thesaurus (or a blog for writers!) doesn’t make you less intelligent. It makes you more intelligent. In fact, behavioral science gauges intelligence in animals on whether or not they use tools! So, no need to feel embarrassed about using them.

Building a phrase that expresses your exact meaning requires commitment to rich language. That doesn’t mean replacing overused words with randomly chosen obscure ones. That would make our writing sound like the Graduate Record Exam! Richness does not come from being more obscure or from using more syllables per word. It comes from being clear about what it is we mean to say and then going beyond the expired words at the front of the shelf and reaching into the rear to find the freshest ones.

Here’s an exercise. Create a list of five to ten words which you personally consider to be on the endangered species list of rich language. Use all of the words on your list in a single poem or short prose piece. Make a pact with yourself to use the words on your list more frequently on a regular basis. Repeat this exercise every couple of months and you will be doing your part to help preserve rich language.


Scroll down to About The Author for more information and check out Eve’s website at: www.jazzpoeteve.com.

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