I just lately got a duplicate of Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge’s Poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life with Words, and after just a few chapters, my creativeness was on fire. I’m at all times looking for new methods to chase writing ideas, and these days I’ve been pondering that we should always discuss more a couple of author’s most basic building blocks: words. So, utilizing phrases as a option to come up with writing ideas sounded supreme to me.

In Poemcrazy, Wooldridge talks about gathering words. She captures phrases, shops them, and then stashes them in all kinds of fascinating places where they might are available handy. As I examine how this brilliant poet gathers phrases so she will use them to jump-begin her inventive writing, I saw how the thought may apply to any type of writer, not just a poet. I additionally noticed how physically amassing words could be exhilarating.

After all, words are the important thing substances to every concoction that we writers prepare dinner up. Some writers view words as means to an end - they’re the uncooked supplies and nothing more. Then there are these writers who appreciate a beautiful word, writers who pause once they come throughout a word that’s compelling in its personal proper, a phrase that strikes or grooves even when it’s simply sitting there all by itself.

Chasing and Capturing Phrases

As Woodridge says, we can borrow, commerce, steal, even invent phrases for our own pleasure. To find phrases, it's a must to pay attention. You’ll uncover them in your environment (round the home or when you’re out and about), in conversations, in your studying material, on TV, and within the songs you hear to. They are the labels we use for unusual objects, extraordinary moments, and anything unusual.

I plucked eviscerate from a favorite R.E.M. song. Arbitrary got here from a tv show. Humma humma - something my mother used to say after I was a kid (it means ho hum or that’s scorching). Wooldridge’s favorite technique is to take walks and grab words from nature or from area guides. She notes, “My pal Tom’s Ford pickup repair handbook is chock filled with nice words: luminosity probe, diesel throttle, control tool, acceleration pump hyperlink, swivel, inside vent valve, choke hinge pin…”

Once you attune yourself to all of the phrases you come into contact with day-after-day, you need a place to stash those that talk to you. Jot them down in your journal, on index playing cards, or sticky notes. Use postcards, present tags, or scrap paper. Lots of these are easy to tote around (a friend of Wooldridge’s always tucks a couple of index cards in her back pocket). Remember to carry a pen.

Tip: You don’t all the time have to put in writing your phrases down. When you find phrases in a magazine or newspaper, just cut them out and then you'll be able to tape them to your journal, be aware cards, or sticky notes.

Storing and Stashing Phrases

For those who’re a word-crazy writer, your word collection will grow rapidly. What are you going to do with all these phrases? Woodridge retains just a few in her purse, a pair on her desk, some particular favorites in a material bag. I maintain envisioning an enormous, spherical glass fishbowl stuffed with colorful playing cards, each with a selection phrase scrawled on it in various colors of ink.

You could hold them in a tin, a basket, a bucket. Toss them right into a drawer or slip them into an envelope. 

Tuck them into your journal.

The concept is to make the method fun. I’ve actually by no means seen the enjoyable in amassing something apart from books and music, but words are a collectible that I can actually get behind.

Utilizing Words for Writing Ideas

The human mind is a humorous thing. Ever notice how annoying, unsavory, or unwelcome recollections pop into your mind at the most inopportune moments? Or how generally, if you sit down to write down, you instantly have completely nothing to say. We’ve all skilled the frustrating phenomenon of having a phrase on the “tip of our tongues.” You already know the word, you understand what it means. You also have a common sense of the way it sounds. However you simply can’t remember it!

Along with your word assortment, you’ll have loads of words at your disposal. Words that will inspire a writing session or present the proper adjective when that other one that you simply wished to use can’t get past the tip of your tongue.

Whenever you’re able to create, just pull out your collection and begin building. Seize a handful of phrases, put them in an order that interests you, maybe add just a few new words to the mix (off the highest of your head or from beyond the tip of your tongue), after which make one thing out of them. It doesn’t have to a be a poem or an essay or a story. It’s a collection of words. Your collection.

Poemcrazy

I’m just a few pages into the e book, however I’m already loving each word in Poemcrazy, so stay tuned for a fuller overview of this awesome little ebook on writing and creativity. In the meantime, get on the market and start amassing some words and allow them to provide you with fresh writing ideas. You’re going to wish them!