Word Loss: A Great Fear

Since I was a wee child words have been my greatest asset. Word games? All me. Bring it on: Scrabble, Boggle, Words with Friends, even the ever fun family game of Words. I could out talk, and out verbally wit for that matter, just about anyone looking to verbally rumble. Ah, the good ol’ days when the words flowed like a Hawaiian volcano.

Flash forward to 2017 and a 43-year-old writer. A person of words. A person who was  a walking dictionary and thesaurus. Now I struggle for familiar words. The simple everyday words at that. In one story I struggled to recall the word charming. Imagine that. Not some crazy twelve letter twenty-dollar word. I was scrambling in my mind. It sounds like “C’,” like chair, like something yellow-orange (okay, I relate things to colors). It’s a man, like tall man, like that guy from that movie and a chair.

“Loss of words is actually part of the aging process …”

I’m not saying the thought processes of my mind are fluid, but there’s a method to my madness. After finally looking up the name of Cinderella’s dream man, I was able to get the word. Then for ten minutes I shook my head and wondered what the hell was wrong with me. I was worried to the point I was almost physically ill.

This isn’t something new. About five years ago I realized the words were escaping me. A real nightmare for any writer. Since I was twelve I suffered debilitating migraines and was once told, after a brain study, that I had lesions on my brain from the severity of the migraines. My personal research proves this is a possibility, which is why migraine sufferers have a greater chance of having a stroke (sorry, interjecting my medical career there). Back to the point: I wondered if perhaps lesions had anything to do with memory loss.

Recently, I spoke with a few other men and women my age and took note that they all searched the vast blue sky for certain words that were “at the tip of their tongue.” After asking if they had more of a difficult time remembering simple words, they all said they did, that sometimes even simple words were a blur. Great!! I mean, not great, but yes. Loss of words is actually a part of the aging process, which is why verbal engagement and mental stimulation is so key as we get older.

I have Thesauraus.com as a favorite on my computer, and such a lifesaver. I try to use new words everyday. I also work to recall a word using any kind of cue I can before looking it up. The computer is  my last resort, though I’ve called in a life line or two.

Me: Dasan, what is that thingy called?
Dasan: What thingy?
Me: You know. You go to someone’s house and you push the thingy so they answer the door. The pushy button thingy?
Dasan: You mean a doorbell?
Me: Awesome. Thanks.

It’s pretty much like that. So when my various writing groups pose the question, “What scares you most as a writer?” My answer is always the same: Losing the words.

What scares you most as a writer? As a writer do you get a little worried about losing words?

Tania L Ramos, RN BSN and author
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$10 words: It’s cat, not quadruped

I am currently reading a book called, “The Elegance of the Hedgehog,” by Muriel Barbery.  This book has frustrated me to no end, but I am hoping that in the next one hundred pages it will all start to make sense.  So far, nilch! But it brings me to this question which all you writers, novelists, authors, and wordologists (I don’t know what’s PC in this land of not stepping on toes): What’s with the big words in books?

I am an educated woman.  I aced my college English classes and love fun. new, colorful words, but do I believe in the wonderful saying, “Don’t use a big word when I a little one will do.”  I am currently sitting with this book and a dictionary, both English and French.  There are words like autodidacts, equivication, imbued, transcendental, preeminence, ontological, quadruped (seriously? just say cat or feline), schism, nihilized, opprobrium…and that’s only reflecting on about 20 pages and picking through ten dollar words.

Again, I am educated, my punctuation may need some tidying up, but my vocabulary is divine, yet my eyes bleed every time I open this book.  My kids and boyfriend mock me, because I am still trying to get through this book, which won many awards, but every time I read a chapter I toss the book and yell, “Where’s my dictionary?” So here is where I confess my nerdiness: when I read and see a word I like, or possibly just forgot about, I put it on a little program on my computer called, “Fun Words.”  When I am writing I refer to my fun words.  However! I do not get over zealous with my words, because I don’t want my readers to run for a dictionary with every sentence.

Sure reading helps expand the vocabulary, but it shouldn’t be intimidating.  And it shouldn’t be so difficult that it makes a reader want to pull their hair out or stalk the author and throw the book in their face and yell, “What the heck is an autodidact? Any why say quadruped when you can say cat? Just say cat! Just say cat! Just say cat!” Are you sensing my frustration? You’ve heard of Bible thumping? Well this woman is word thumping.  So why do I continue to read it? Because I dropped serious money for this multi award winning book and the jacket cover synapse sold me.  I knew I shoulda bought that NASCAR Harlequin.

Since then I have started reading The Canterville Ghost, by Oscar Wilde, and even in 19th Century literature, it is far easier to read him than a modern day novel.  I am still working on this book which vomits ten dollar words, but can only manage about a chapter a day.  At this rate I will be done by late summer.  I told my oldest son, who laughs that I haven’t given up…”Perseverance,” I say, hand raised high like the statue of Liberty holding a wordy book.  “Perseverance, my young padawan.  Perseverance and a lot of money.   I paid a mighty price for these ten dollar words, and since I paid about $20 for the book, I realize that after the first two ten dollar words the rest are free.  Maybe I can sell them on my blog.”  You see, when life hands you lemons, you make lemonade then figure out how to sell it for $5 a cup…Starbucks has cornered this market, but I will use words to make my millions.

The moral of the story is…if you use a million ten dollar words you may lose some readers, with the exception of Christian Science Monitors who would call it a book of the year, but note the word, “science” is in there.  Most people cower just at that word alone.  As for me, I am unimpressed at the language, especially when other words would do just fine, and it lessens the appeal of the book and has rendered Muriel Barbery off my must read author’s list.  Do not use a big word where a little word will do! Cat! Cat! Cat! not quadruped! ugh…