This week's assignment from Shane at Heart Reflections:Collect your favorite words throughout the previous week and put together in a story, a poem or a random post. Read this post for more ideas.
Lately, I have been having trouble with reading comprehension. (Something I never had a problem with before ... I think it might have something to do with having too many things I want to do in a short period of time.)
So, I thought the assignment was to observe what words I heard people say most over the last week. Here, in my neck of the woods, we are enduring a stretch of mid-90° weather that is lasting and lasting ... So the words I observed this week all had to do with heat: hot, sizzling, sweaty, blazing. I was all set to write about "hot" and how in today's world that word is used in two different ways.
I didn't read the post for more ideas ... until today!
The idea for our challenge was to increase our "word pool," or become a collector of words. L.L. Barkat said that words "are distinct, arresting, memorable, except when we use the same ones over and over." She also said that having a collection of words at the ready would be helpful for the writer.
I'm all about that!
If you are like me, a voracious reader, then you already know a lot of unique words. You can't help it! I've learned so many many words over the years from the myriad of books, magazines, articles and labels that I've read. You just subconsciously pick up knowledge of words.
I also have to say that all these words come out when you least expect it. Here's a classic example: Once when our family was eating out, my husband wiped his stubbly chin with a napkin. I piped up, "Hon, you've got napkin residue on your chin!" Boy, did I ever take a ribbing about saying "napkin residue."
I'm always being teased about being the "human dictionary." That's okay, I want be a person who uses unique words.
I worry about our youth today, it seems that not only do they just use common words, they add to it filthy language for emphasis! I always tell my girls that I think people cuss because they are too ignorant to know a better word to describe their emotion.
So ... yeah, I'm a word collector and I'm going to keep doing it. Words are one collection I don't have to worry about having enough space to store - my Creator has given me room in my brain!
If you'd like to see what other's have on their mind about this topic, visit Shane at Heart Reflections.
Oh...I could have written this. I'm a word collector, too. Another thing I do, is pick out my favorite sentences (similes, metaphors, descriptions, etc.) from books. Then, I share them with my daughter and she does the same from her books with me. It's fun. Knowing how much we're alike, you probably do that, too. Wheel of Fortune, Scrabble, UpWords...anything wordy is for me. This was a fun post to read. :)
ReplyDeleteBlogging I think makes us all word collectors :) One of the great benefits of it :)
ReplyDeleteOh, I love this post. I, too, am a word collector, and I've never really simplified or changed the way I talk when speaking to our children, so as a result, they have pretty large vocabularies. I always think there's nothing funnier than hearing big words come out of little mouths!
ReplyDeleteWonderful Jerri! Thanks for participating!
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