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04/27/2008
Cool New Book...
I just finished reading the book Spunk & Bite, by Arthur Plotnik. Spunk & Bite takes its name from the Strunk & White Elements of Style book, which I have not read, but which is supposed to be one of the bibles for writers looking to know how to write properly. Anyway, Spunk & Bite is basically about how rules can (and possibly should) be bent to create interesting writing. Overall I didn't think the book was the greatest, but there was one memorable chapter called "Magic in the Names of Things", which tells about finding just the right word for the things in your writing, rather than something like, "the thingamabob that does such-and-such".
I'm so excited now, because after reading that chapter, I've discovered that books like the Random House Webster's Word Menu exist, and is apparently a glossary of all sorts of interesting words. I also discovered what a thesaurus really is.
Yes, you heard that right! I actually thought I owned a proper thesaurus, but as it turns out, the book I had was called the 21st Century Synonym and Antonym Finder which is not quite the same thing. In that book, you look up a word, and it has alphabetized lists of synonyms and antonyms below it. In a thesaurus like Roget's Thesaurus, ideas are mapped out in tree-like structures at the beginning, and once you find the idea that's close to, or related to, what you want to express, then you go find the topic number and there it gives synonyms and related words, organized by flavour. How cool!
So yesterday I was at a second hand store and spotted a nice copy of Roget's Thesaurus for $1, so now I'm the proud owner of a proper thesaurus. I'm so pumped! Now I'm truly on the way to being a proper writer. :-) Or, at least, I'm taking a step in the right direction!
Step 2: Stop dilly-dallying and start writing again.
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