Take These Verbs and Use 'Em

One thing I can say about the assignments we're now receiving in my women's writing group is that they're certainly not rote—they're more like Forest Gump's proverbial box of chocolates, except that the writing assignments are more likely to generate indigestion.

Not that I'm trying to compare writing to an ailment of the digestive tract; not exactly, anyway! But the comparative ease of writing, stacked up against downing assorted chocolates—even those heinous, fruit-flavored creme ones—is rather dramatically different. In fact, I tend more to agree with Red Smith, who, while he did refer to writing as "easy", then went on to clarify that it was equivalent to opening a vein.

I've always taken this to mean that writing is like slitting one's wrists, although I suppose that might be seen as a wee bit extremist.

But back to the latest assignment—although, technically speaking, it's not THE latest. As I sit here, on my bunk bed in my parents' Internet-unavailable Wyoming cabin, I have no access to the most recent writing assignment, which would have been issued two days ago. In my happy isolation, I am still working on the LAST most recent writing assignment, in which I was told to write, with as many words as the years I had thus far lived, a succinct summary of my life.

Which sounds tricky enough, but fully HALF of those words were to be verbs, and all of those words were to be extraordinary.

By way of comparison, take a look at the most commonly used words, and you are going to be very bored indeed; these words are not only common, but they are also tiresome to the rounded nubbin of dismal. We lack variety, we lack complexity, and in both of these, we also lack specificity. With so many splendid and detailed words available, we as writers should be appalled, and we probably would be, but who has the time?

As I discovered, when I tried to think of words I don't use, it's hard enough to be creative without an enhanced vernacular as the agenda du jour, but when you pair the two, whatever mental constipation you're currently combating will congeal into a worst-case-scenario that all the artistic fiber in the world can't shift.

In other words, it's hard to write without using the words you typically use.

After I thought about it some more, I considered the possibility that I might, per usual, be reading too much into the exercise. This revelation, combined with the fact that none of my fellow writing group writers are going to see the results of my mentally-blocked efforts—unless they join you, the typically-silent dozen or so daily readers that stalk my blog like corn (that would be ACTUAL corn stalks, not children of the corn, who, if I remember the spooktacular tale correctly from reading it in my misspent teenage years, did a thoroughly admirable job of stalking ... not that it's relevant here in the slightest)—finally led to freeing me to at least complete the exercise, with one small twist.

I decided not to try to summarize my life in 40 atypical words (at least half of them unusual verbs), but instead, my writing life.

Here it is:

adduce

vie

grapple

concede

embellish

laud

amalgamate

equalize

accrue

contravene

persist

scrutinize

aver

percolate

transpose

extrude

enliven

circumvent

denote

abstain

sanctify

elucidate

contemplate

venerate

bamboozle

cogitate

agglutinate

eschew

congregate

adumbrate

simulate

emend

scrawl

gibber

recollect

delineate

endeavor

blather, immerse, recur

Please note: They're ALL verbs! And if you stretch your imagination and stand on your head, they're even all relevant. ;)