The roots of words. Olive Senior said that babies should be born with a dictionary. Well I think babies should be born with an etymological dictionary. Roots of words: “passion” and “patient” come from the same root. “Turbans” come from the word “tulip”. Our common word “daisy” comes from a kenning word for the sun – the eye of day.
I also like mistakes. Like when parts of signs fall off. I saw a sign at a service station that said “elf serve”. When I once missed a bus, and I was carrying a small baby, I saw a sign at a Shell station that kept flashing “Super hell”. I also like seeing words with in-words. Can you see the “harm” in “Pharmacy”? Can you see the “dent” in “accident”? Or the “over” in “Lover”? Just about anything can set me off.
You have to be obsessed with language if you’ll be a writer. You will drive people crazy asking, “What did that billboard say? What was that?” I just read everything. For instance, this stretch limo that brings us here, like grad ’98. Somebody said something was a “Mickey Mouse operation.” I said, “why do we say that? [Isn’t] its meaning trivial? When he’s the richest rodent in the world? And the most famous rodent in the world. Why do we say ‘Mickey Mouse’?” Now I’m obsessed with that and I’m going to have to find out why. Is this the same Mickey Mouse or is there another Mickey Mouse out there?
Sometimes I feel that people don’t love language anymore. It seems to me that the f-word is used as a kind of constant filler, and rather than trying to be precise and find an interesting and imaginative way of saying something, they say “fuckin’ awful”. When you write, it’s terribly important to get the right word. What your characters say is very important, and how they say it is also extremely important. I push this with my fellow writers. The right word is there. You just have to try different words the way you’d try on a blouse or something, and find the word that fits that character. You can have a character say something that’s completely out of character to make a satirical point, or the person is nervous or something, but generally speaking, the language should fit the character. You have to work on that, and remember that all speech in stories is artificial. Don’t think that you can just write everyday speech. It pushes the story forward. Otherwise it shouldn’t be there. Chuck it out.
- Audrey Thomas, 1998
- Photo Credit: abcbookworld.com
