In a post earlier this week I encouraged myself and other writers to “play,” in a more childlike way, in order to break open the imagination.
What I have liked to do, ever since I was a child myself, was to play with words. And nothing serves that purpose better than my Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary. My edition was published in 1972 and is eight inches thick. That’s a lot of words to play with!
Now, when I think of the term “good book” it calls to mind the three good books that I checked out of the library today: Varina, by Charles Frazier, Desolation Mountain, by William Kent Krueger, and Everything I Never Told You, by Celeste Ng.
Webster’s defines Good Book as the Bible. But when I turn to this big thick and very good book on my desk to look up the meaning of a word, I always discover a new way to spice up the vocabulary and word choice in my work-in-progress.
For example, I found the following definition when I looked up the word RABBIT: “A burrowing rodent, Lepus cuniculus, of the hare family, smaller than most hares and characterized by soft fur, long ears, and a bobbed tail.” Hmm . . . a bobbed tail. A new way to describe Nettie Rabbit’s white puffy tail. And from there, one can make any number of associations: rabbet, rabbi, rabid, rabbit moth, rabbit punch, rabbit rat, rabbitroot, rabble…all sorts of different words that just might take any writer down a rabbit hole of more surprising story possibilities.
Given that Day #21 of National Novel Writing Month is the day before Thanksgiving, I was happy to write 972 words.
Twenty-one days down, only nine to go.
#NaNoWriMo18