Faithful Friend

It’s my good fortune to have many wonderfully faithful friends of the two legged and four-legged kind. But I also have faithful friends of paginated persuasion. Among these, I am especially attached to my Roget’s Thesaurus. It was given to me by my beloved mom, Dorothy, many years ago. It’s a 5th edition and there have surely been more printed since then, but I will never part with this particular volume. In my tiny office, it sits on a tiny little chair with “Alexander” painted on it in bright red along with colored kits and balloons. My mom gave it to my son when he was just a little tyke and I adopted it after Alex outgrew it.

There’s rarely a day that goes by without my turning to my slightly dog-eared, ever-faithful cornucopia of juicy, exciting words. What a treasure! And to think that Shakespeare wrote his plays without either a dictionary or a thesaurus (see Sans Dictionary) — just amazing!

A while ago, a character in my YA novel said (this just shows you how far gone I am, I actually think my characters are alive and talking) something about a “difficult brew.” TOTALLY BORING adjective I thought to myself. So I pulled out my handy-dandy thesaurus and began rummaging around. I turned up quite a list: hard, trying wretched, miserable, troublous, troublesome, stressful, arduous, toilsome, strenuous, unyielding, knotty, thorny, burdensome, bothersome, vexatious, trying, grueling — and more!

Ultimately, I went with “troublesome, toilsome brew,” which I like about a thousand times better than what I started with. What a little adventure I went through among a thicket of synonyms to find the ones I chose! Just dipping into my well of words and seeing what my bucket pulls up makes me feel hopeful and excited about writing. Tools of the trade — how wonderful they are.

About karinwritesdangerously

I am a writer and this is a motivational blog designed to help both writers and aspiring writers to push to the next level. Key themes are peak performance, passion, overcoming writing roadblocks, juicing up your creativity, and the joys of writing.
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