Whatever kind of writer you are, there are trade-offs. I’m fast. Too fast. It is 9:40 a.m as I write this and I have written almost 2,000 words this morning. Granted, they are rough draft words, the kind of words one writes in the early throes of a novel, when it has the power to shock and surprise you. I am, in fact, still a little stunned by something just revealed to me. I knew my main character had been betrayed by girls she considered her friends, back when she was 15, but the nature of the betrayal is unsettling and showed up, rather unexpectedly, at the end of a chapter in which the woman, now middle-aged, visits her father at a senior residence where he has been roaming the halls, his bathrobe not cinched as tightly as it should be, given that he’s wearing nothing else. (He’s of sound mind, actually, sharp as a tack. He just enjoys upsetting the elderly women who live on his hall.)
As it happens, the final copy of ANOTHER THING TO FALL arrived at my house this week. Usually, I take the finished book and lock it away somewhere, out of sight, as if it were a demon that could destroy me. Odds are, I’ll open the pages and see a glaring error. In fact, I noticed a shocking over-use of adverbs in one section, a profligacy with adverbs that, in a just world, could end with Stephen King and Elmore Leonard showing up on one’s doorstep with a rubber hose.
Then I flipped to the last line. How I had worried that last line. Just getting there had been a struggle; an early version had actually ended with an homage to the end of Ulysses, which I retreated from because a) I haven’t actually read Ulysses and b) “Oh, get over yourself! Ulysses? Who are you kidding?” Finally, I found the moment I needed, a tiny, fleeting image of a man, a stranger, someone who has not appeared in the text before. It spoils nothing to tell you that I described this man’s face as “wild with hope” in draft after draft.
But in December, as I sat with the galleys in my lap on a film set in Sasolburg, South Africa — oh, yeah, I’m totally trying to convince you that my life is glamorous, but if you’ve ever been to a film set, much less Sasolburg, you’ll know I was bored out of my mind — I worried that line over and over. “Wild with hope” was too . . . normal. I wanted something that would be more surprising, an unexpected juxtaposition. I wanted, in short, to be a poet. I often want to be a poet. But the fact is, I know some poets. (Lizzie Skurnick, who pops in here from time to time is an excellent one.) Every January, when I’m at Eckerd College’s Writers in Paradise and I hear others read poems — Peter Meinke, Beth Ann Fennelly and, this year, Jay Nicorvo — I briefly suffer from the delusion that I might be able to write poems. This year, for example, I kept working — in my head — on a poem called “Twelve Things I Must Do if I am to Become Peter Meinke Before I Die.” (A sex change was not among those things, but learning tennis was.) But, as Robin Williams says in the under-rated “Dead, Again,” you have to know what you are, a smoker or a non-smoker, and be that thing. I am a non-poet.
Still, after much thought, I changed “wild” to “weary.” And when I saw it in the finished copy, I thought, fleetingly: I was right. A quick Google shows many instances of “wild with hope,” but “weary with hope” is much more rare and, interestingly, often applied to DeSoto, the explorer whose story seemed most vivid to me in grade school. DeSoto and Hudson.
Stories of word choices that have obsessed you, whether in writing, marriage proposals or grocery lists.
I’ve written a few poems and I think the most important thing I learned about doing that is to not write past the end. I once wrote a poem that was 4 pages long and after much editing it became a mere half a page with all the relevant content and in a specific form. The message was stronger, and even more accessible. I have a friend who takes delight in writing poems that only people who know him well would understand. I don’t really get the point of that, why bother if you’re not interested in whether or not a wide range of people will understand any given poem. I have favorite poets who write both short and long poems who are wildly successful, Hayden Carruth’s stanzas 66 and 67 from The Sleeping Lady are brilliant and Audrey Lord wow she really has an observance of life that knocks my socks off.
I’ve been reading and writing a lot about the current state of the campaigning for the next president. A phrase that seems to have materialized out of nowhere is SUPER DELEGATE. I went in search of information about this new designation and have concluded that it is yet another brick in the barrier that keeps the majority of the American people from choosing their president. Again it is put in the hands of designated representatives who are anything but that for most of us. So Super Delegate are the words that are messing with me just now.
I believe it is better to stop messing with Super Delegates and to start appreciating Super Tuscans.
I got hooked on James Lipton’s “In the Actor’s Studio” a while back and love the questionnaire at the end. One question is “what’s your favorite word?”and the choices have been interesting to hear. The idea of HAVING a favorite word appeals to me.
I seem to recall rec.arts.mystery discovering the word “sluice” and it became one of those words that you then saw EVERYwhere. No longer on RAM but they used to post “sluice” alerts.
Woodstock’s commens bring to mind the function of “I’m sorry” in English. It serves several purposes but there are 2 that show up a lot. One is an apology. “I stepped on your foot, I’m sorry.” The other is an expression of dismay, sympathy, ruing the news. “I heard about your divorce. I’m sorry.” I wish there were two words for this. I know that if I say “I’m sorry” to a friend, she’ll know what I mean. But sometimes for a split second, you want to say “it’s not your fault” which diminishes what was said.
Obama’s book title THE AUDACITY OF HOPE pleases me. When was the last time we heard “audacity” used in this manner. I like that and I like it in the same way that Laura, you used “wild” in that last line. The image it offers is so different and so…tangible that while “weary” would have worked, i’m glad it’s “wild”. It feels smart there.
My James Lipton quiz response? Serendipity.
But, it’s weary in the final version! And when you get there, it will make sense.
I wrote a paper for Freshman Comp in 1978. I wrote that someone had “a glimmer of understanding”.
The instructor wrote the word “glint” above the word glimmer. Was something wrong with glimmer? Was it her suggestion that “glint” was a better word here than glimmer? And if it was her suggestion, how seriously should I take it?
Since the suggestion was being made by the person who had the responsibility of giving me a grade for the paper, in the next draft, I changed “glimmer” to “glint”. But I was never convinced that it was a better choice.
Thirty years later, I am STILL certain that “glimmer” better represented what I was trying to say than “glint”.
I like glimmer.
I honestly don’t think I’ve heard “glint” in the teacher’s usage.
I love the word “paradigm” And someone quite close to me is always saying “interpose.”
I also like to use “comprise” correctly, just to show off.
When I was in college in the 70′s (my 7 years of undergrad was worth it, even though I never got the degree) I was learning to play guitar and wrote a song that was representative of my mindset at the time, “You were only fucking, while I was making love”.
The word fucking serverely limited the audience for the song. As I tried other more appropriate words or phrases, screwing, doing it, etc., I realized that the most appropriate word for the song was the one that I chose first. So I kept it and today the song is one of the few that I have written that is never played for anyone. But it is a fucking good song.
And, I am sorry in advance if the word violates the Memory Project space.
About 30 years ago, I endured a tragedy. Never mind the details, it changed everything. I am a much better person now because of what I learned during the months that followed. But, even contemplating the worth of what I learned – there is no absolutely no way I can term that whole series of events “good.” But on a few occasions since, I have tried to describe to others the value of what I gained, and I’ve realized that I can call the experience “valuable.” Which, of course, has a positive connotation in most senses of the word. But it wasn’t “good.” I will never be able to accept that label. “Valuable” works, “good” does not.<p>And yes, this distinction does obsess me.
Aw, thank you! Well, you know, I spend my life wishing I could finish anything longer than a grocery list, so there you go.
Judging by our recent conversations, I know ANOTHER reason why “weary with hope” is far more apropos.
Oh, and right NOW I am obsessed with “cretin”, “sex fiend” and “unwind”, reasons tbd by tomorrow.
Well Laura, you may not find many Google usages of the phrase right now but I have a prediction. After our every four year political convulsion I suspect we will all be “weary with hope”.
My current word or phrase choice dilemma concerns writing to my 95 year old father in law about what his lawyer calls “post life” decisions. Ack. Dear Dad, We need to talk about your post life. Dear Dad, we need to think about when you are dead. Dear Dad, Remember when Mom died and everything was so confusing. We don’t want your post life to be so messy. Dear Dad, How come the daughter-in-law gets to do this stuff?
Years ago, I noticed that despite the wide and varied word choices in all of Harlan Ellison’s logorrhea, he seems to like the word “scintillance.” He uses several variations, only occasionally resorting to “scintillating.” And as a result, in the one play I’ve written specifically about a poet, that word popped back out of my subconscious in the final poem at the end of the play, and there it was.
The poet in the play is Welsh and, in a perfect world, would be Richard Burton. And when I first realized that, the rest of his poetry and dialogue almost wrote itself. (And no, it has nothing to do with Dylan Thomas; the poetry that really informed my poet’s work is Gerard Manley Hopkins, whose work follows a more traditional Welsh rhythm. I’ll stop now…)
Other than that, the one word/words that I find most often when I go back and reread drafts would be myslef/himslef/herslef/etc. That’s the one typo I’ve consistently made year in and year out, no matter how conscious I am of it. Clearly, some part of my brain is obsessed with -sleves.
Laura, i assume so. i mean that’s the thing, both words work. I just liked the image that “wild” brought.
John, yours was better. Your teacher’s suggestion doesn’t seem to work to convey the same thing. But then i wrote a poem back around in h.s. where I used “31 pieces of silver” and my creative writing teacher wrote “why 31?” when she gave it back. I’m not enamored of writing teachers, I admit (ok, it was high school and one teacher but, I don’t think it was that obscure to write about selling out and inflation.)
Took me years to undersand what “paradigm” and “parameters” mean after hearing them in class and forever forgetting to go look them up.
The captain on “Babylon 5″ used to say “abso-fraggin-lutely” (to avoid the “standards and practices” drones i guess) and it became far too useful chez Roscoe.
Many years ago, I was in a playwriting class and wrote a one act that I was pretty happy with. My instructor suggested the made up word of “abso-fucking-lutely”. It seemed gratuitous then. Even today, after Mr Big and SATC, it still seems so. That was what, almost 30 years ago, and I still think about it.
“Weary with hope.” What a serendipity of choice you made,Laura.
I was writing an email recently about being back in Tucson for the first time in a long time, and wrote about “the urgency of shadows” there. It was only later that I realized that was exactly what I’d intended to say, with all the connotations I had in mind.
I am so glad I’m not the only one who has seen Dead Again, and even better not the only one who really likes it.
Laura: Ah, yes…words that haunt you…I am a poet, and sometimes in a great while, that tendency pops up in my prose mystery stories. A case in point: I’m in the throes of a new project, and only have 10 or 15 minutes at a time to sit at my laptop and write…no idea where it’s actually going, but I have a person who is literally hiding out in the Everglades (I know, such a cliche nowadays), but she’s hiding for an immensely personal reason…and then gets pulled into a situation similar to the one she’s running from, and can’t get away. The paragraph I wrote about that situation has been tearing at me for two weeks now. This is it:
Heart pounds, palms sweat, but nobody sees my reaction. Keep a straight face, look interested, take notes. The parents are sitting across the picnic table, two feet apart, not touching, both filled with angry wonder that anyone could think to touch, much less steal, their baby away from them. Never mind the baby is 7 years old, blond haired, blue eyed, and trusts everyone. Parents never want to believe someone could be that full of hate, that full of evil. So full of self that taking their child seemed as easy as walking into a school and walking out with their little girl, right under the noses of the teachers. Never mind all that. All I hear is the voice of my dying child screaming, “Don’t go! Don’t leave me! Mommy!” I stare at the couple, but my heart lives in another year.
(the key words are the last ones, after “but…”
My lifelong word obsession is the proper use of the word myriad. Once I found out that it’s supposed to be used without any other words with it, the phrase “a myriad of” has haunted me. But I get very giddy when I see someone, somewhere who uses it properly.
My favorite word phrase is from Sex and the City when Mr. Big would always say abso-fucking-lutely. his delivery and that line are perfect.
Words are cool.