The Muse Returns to Play Word Games

I've recently returned from a two month stay in Colorado. My sister is well on the road to recovery from lung cancer. She finished radiation, and will have the results in a month. In the meantime she continues to pursue a healthy Ph balanced diet and an easily managed alternative treatment. 

After spending much coveted time with her, I find I miss her terribly. We keep in close communication by phone and e-mail. Having been absorbed with Joan's illness and recovery; first from surgery, then from a very serious case of pneumonia, I found my well for writing and thinking creatively virtually dried up. As I get back into the swing of daily chores, catching up on postponed business, and enjoying family, creative writing still hasn't gained its place at the top of my "tudu" list — but I'm working on it. 

As part of one of the lessons in the writing workshops I give, I introduce a few tricks for awakening the muse or stimulating the imagination. One of them, adapted from an assignment in a creative writing class I took many years ago, is one Joan and I enjoyed doing together. The original assignment was to take five random words (given by the instructor) and working them into a paragraph, and then developing it into a story. 

What fun it is to string five random, unrelated words into a paragraph that makes sense. Or to write a piece of flash-fiction from a descriptive title as a prompt. Another way to stimulate the muse is to look at a picture or photo and write a story about it. During Joan's recovery, she and I took turns picking five random words and then, to make it even more challenging,  wrote a sentence that contained them all. It was so much fun because my sister is a very talented writer. Since I've been home, we've continued the game by giving each other 5 words, then e-mailing back our sentences. 

For example, here is the first word list I gave my sister via e-mail. Hiding, Hostage, Majestic, Suggest, Thousand. 

Here is the sentence she made: The game you suggest sounds like it might be a thousand times more fun than hiding in the majestic mountains where we were taken hostage. 

Taking time out from working on various workshops I'm presenting in the next two months, I occasionally invite my muse to come and play. For example. Here are five random words I pulled from glancing around the office:  Bunnies, Calendar, Water, Challenge, and Doctor  (try to put them all into an opening sentence.)

Now let's see what my muse can do with that!

The doctor checked his calendar, before accepting the challenge to rescue the water-logged bunnies. 

Now here are five random words (picked from glancing at various papers and brochures near my desk). See what you can do in one sentence... or a paragraph as seed for a story. 

Complete, Saddle, Price, Mission, Soar

Have fun with words. 

Tools of the trade

In the March 2nd post, I referred to words as the tools of the writer's trade. That is not the best analogy, however. My husband is a builder, specializing in tile work and remodels, but has done everything from "concrete to cabinets" in both new homes and commercial buildings. 

As I compare my vocation to his, I see my words not as tools, but as building blocks. They are like the tile my husband lays in various designs and configurations. Nouns and verbs are the boards that frame the walls, the concrete that forms the foundation. Conjunctions and prepositions are the nails that link the boards together. Adverbs and adjectives are the trim pieces, the mosaics and design tile. They are the "gingerbread." Some are superfluous while others add interest and emphasis. 

So what are my tools? Well, there are the obvious: the pen and paper, the word processor, the internet and books for research. Less tangible tools are the imagination, voice, language and the rules (or patterns) for organizing the building blocks in a clear, understandable, and interesting design. 

Each writer has his or her own style, method, and voice, just as builders may have their own specialties, methods, and styles. Yet we all use the same building blocks—words, and put them into a creation of our own with the tools in our bags. 

Words are tools

Words are our tools, we writers like to say; 

The tools of our trade as we labor every day. 

And certainly that's true, as far as the saying goes,

But we have no monopoly, as everybody knows. 

Not just necessary tools are all the precious words

for the erudite authors and the loquacious nerds,

But necessary, really, to let human life persist,

For without any words, even thoughts cannot exist.

   (Janet Muirhead Hill, 2008)

Words are essential tools indeed. I have a grandson with verbal apraxia, which is a motor speech disorder characterized by inability to plan and produce the specific series of movements of the tongue, lips, jaw, and palate necessary for intelligible speech. The same problems can occur in adults as a result of stroke or other brain injury, but childhood apraxia is present at birth. There is evidence that it is genetic, though the exact cause has not been found. 

Apraxia is terribly frustrating for the affected child, because they're often highly intelligent. They know what they want to say, but cannot communicate it. Uncorrected, it will remain a problem, some sources say, for a lifetime. My grandson, with speech therapy, has made great improvement and no longer suffers from the esteem-crushing defeat he used to feel when he could not make himself understood. I mention this as an example of  how important our words are to life and happiness. 

What if we had no words at all? What if we didn't even know what we wanted to say; had never heard a human voice or any model for expressing thoughts vocally? I recently caught a TV documentary on feral children. Studies show that those who have little or no human contact or interaction in their first few years of life lose the capability to learn to speak. And without speech, they are unable to function independently in society. 

Except for the limited few mentioned above, we all use words everyday. What is important to our personal identity and self-worth is how we choose to use them. Are our words a true reflection of what we believe? Or are they used to deceive and manipulate? Do our words, as John Gardner suggests they should, improve the human situation? Looking at it that way, we see our responsibility to choose words carefully, but even more important, to speak, and not remain silent when we have something to say. As Henry David Thoreau said, "Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe."  

I sincerely invite your comments.