Collecting Words

I keep a big hardcover notebook on my writing desk for recording pretty words, favorite quotes, plot ideas, and descriptions. Usually I scribble things down on scraps of paper and stash them between the pages to save for later. Sometimes I think I should be more mindful and take the time to record them directly rather than dumping them off so unceremoniously. But then, once in awhile, I pull out the notebook in an idle moment, and out falls all these disparate little scraps covered in wonderful scribblings–and it’s kind of magical!

Today I added the words asunder and tumbling to my “beautiful words” list, as well as gelid and ice-kissed to my “winter words” list. Afterward, as I read through the amended lists, I realized the little scraps of paper are part of the fun–a little treasure stash of words I love but had completely forgotten, just waiting to be discovered whenever it occurs to me. I think I’ll stick to the scraps after all.

5 Comments on “Collecting Words”

Anonymous
January 17, 2016

That was beautiful!!! And isn’t that what writing is all about? Finding inspiration in different places, and in different words, phrases, pictures, etc. And, I agree! It does seem magical to have all of those wonderful scraps of spurs for your imagination falling out of a notebook like leaves from an Autumn tree!
Kris Morgan
January 19, 2016

Gelid: new word for me! Great idea 🙂
Shannon Taylor Hodnett
January 20, 2016

I do this, too…. but I have a file on my computer called “words & phrases”. 😊 Sometimes a beautiful word or group of words pops into my head and if I don’t write them down somewhere, they are lost forever! I think this is a super smart thing for us, as authors, to do to capture our creativity…..our imagination is on-call 24/7 even if WE aren’t. 😉
Bobbi
February 5, 2016

This is such a great idea. How wonderful it would be if students would do this daily to build vocabularies
juliajsimpson
February 7, 2016

Love it! ❤