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Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life

Book by Douglas Wilson · 10 quotes · Writing, Logophile, Pg 84

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Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life Quotes

“The brain is more like a muscle and less like a storage area. If you really want to be a writer, you should want to write a lot. If you want to write a lot, then you need to be in training. You are preparing to run marathons, not emptying a suitcase. Learning new languages, acquiring new vocabulary, keeping yourself in various forms of constant logocentric discipline is one of the best things you can do. And language acquisition is nothing if not logocentric discipline.”

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“The writer must know something about the world outside books—whether his or the books of the others. At the same time, he must also be thoroughly acquainted with the world inside books. Words on a page are part of real life. They cannot be substituted for the whole, but they cannot be taken from it either.”

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“If you are writing for an educated audience and, to take an example, you use the phrase mutatis mutandis, you are not showing off—you are communicating. You are using words to do what words are supposed to do. It reminds me of the time that someone complained to William F. Buckley about all the unusual words that he would employ. His reply was that the words were not unusual to him. Words are there for a reason, and foreign phrases can often do the trick that more homey phrases cannot. But if you are blogging about your adventures as a shopping mom, and you write about your purchase of a 48-pack of corn dogs at Costco, and you describe them as de provenance étrangère, it had better be a joke. Unusual words or phrases (foreign and domestic) are a barrier to understanding, unless the point is to communicate to the reader that you know something they don't. Then they understand what you are doing quite well.”

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“Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.' (Prov. 27:17) In a similar way that conversation sharpens a man's countenance, conversation with men throughout history sharpens a man's mind... If this is the case, and it is, then a point should be made to seek out profitable companions in a disciplined fashion throughout your life with books.”

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