Excavating for meaning …
… in WORDS
Words are the theme of this month’s writing competition.
Words, before they are thought of as parts of speech. Words that fill your writing with meaning.
Every word has its own savour, but the savours can change over time, and yet, they carry their history with them. Take a word like gravity, for instance. What did gravity mean before Newton’s time? Does it matter? Is it important? Is it vital? Is it life-threatening not to know? No. Is it life-enhancing to know? Absolutely. Yes. Will it give you gravitas? It probably will, but best to temper it with a bit of levity.
But which of these two words (gravity and levity) do you think entered the English language first? If it was gravity, then levity may well have come in to lighten the load. If it was levity, then maybe gravity came in to make people take things a bit more seriously. Judging from the trend towards logical reductionism, was it the latter? According to the Online Etymological Dictionary, gravity, in the sense of ‘seriousness’ came in around 1500; levity started to be used in the 1560s. So it wasn’t a case of ‘get serious’ — it was a case of ‘lighten up, dude!’ That was until Newton appeared on the scene and applied the word gravity to a physical force in the 1620s. As a result, people started to have gravitas (did you know that there’s a general rule that the word be italicised?), rather than gravity in 1924. You’d have thought it would have come in sooner.
Gravity and gravitation signify different things. And there’s a difference between gravity, seriousness, and solemnity. George Crabb writes: ‘Some children exhibit a remarkable gravity as soon as they begin to observe; a regular attention to religious worship will induce a habit of seriousness; the admonitions of a parent on his death-bed will have peculiar solemnity. Switch out the words, and the meaning changes. Fundamentally.
By engaging with words and their meanings, we engage deeply with their essence. Then we can start to use them to create a piece of writing full of savour — just as a chef would use ingredients to create a Michelin-star-worthy dish full of flavour. Fill your writing with savour — savourful words.
Just as gravity (abstract) links to weight (concrete quality), so seriousness (abstract) links to slow movement (physical concrete action), and solemnity (abstract) links to both a physical quality of fullness, and a sense of being whole, complete, one, a flavour that the other two closely related words do not have. Owen Barfield argues, in Poetic Diction, that abstract concepts generally can be found to link to physical concrete realities buried deep in the metaphorical heart of language.
Savouring words is one thing; using them artistically is another.
There’s a writing exercise I use to encourage writers to explore this further which features in my collection. I call it Imaginary Building:
Take a concrete word and an abstract word (shoe — peace) (tree — justice) (nose — light) (hair — happiness) and meditate on the potential connections, the etymology, the flavours of the words. What does pairing them result in? What would a ‘peace shoe’ be like? What would ‘shoehorning a peace process’ be like?
Compose a short poetic piece of writing — try for poetic prose and/or poetry which flows from the inspiration you’ve derived from tasting the essential flavour of the words.
Example
United in each other
Two parts of a whole
We are covered in peace
We make a good pair
When we meet our thoughts
Bound by our words
A pair of bros, one brogue
Our words find us
Lace us together
Make us face up to each other
Make us bare our souls
They say muck brings luck
Let’s muck in together
Make us some magic
Each one untied
In one another united
And that, by the way, is 73 words and starts and ends with the same word, which is what this month’s competition task is.
As a reminder, here’s Carol Michelon’s illustration for this month’s theme, Words:
Your task is to choose a living word and start and end a piece of writing with it. Your piece of writing must be no longer than 73 words in total. It must link to and be inspired in some way by Carol’s illustration and show off your ability to reference, or feature words in an inspirational way.
Each month the overall winner for that month will receive a $10 Amazon gift
card.
In the event one person wins 3 competitions, they will receive a 30-minute story
structure consultation with me, Leon Conrad, in addition to their main prizes.
The first 50 people to enter will receive a digital copy of my forthcoming book
of writing exercises, ‘Master the Art and Craft of Writing’ on its publication in
2023, irrespective of whether or not they submit a winning entry.
All entries will receive a “thank you” in the acknowledgment section of the book.
After the end of the competition, and/or by the end of March 2023 at the latest, all entrees who have subscribed to my newsletter on Substack will be sent a sampler of exercises from my forthcoming book of writing exercises, ‘Master the Art and Craft of Writing’ which may feature some or all of the exercises covered in the competition, but will also include additional information not previously published online, so everyone’s potentially a winner!
Full rules here.
Deadline: Midnight on Sunday 24th April 2022 BST
Upload your submissions here and share them on social media with the hashtags #unknownstoryteller #carolmichelon #leonconrad #artandcraftofwriting
This Course and Competition is part of The Unknown Storyteller project, focusing on the art and craft of how to tell a story, Master the Art and Craft of Writing is the counterpart to Story and Structure: A complete guide. The book explains how to structure the story you want to tell in the first place and will help you shape great stories to tell. It’s due out later this year, in the second half of 2022.
Stay connected! 🔗
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