’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Lewis Carroll penned those immortal words, presumably in a drug-induced haze, nearly a century and a half ago – in a tome, by the way, not titled “Alice in Wonderland,” but rather Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There.
It may not seem like it, but 12 of the 23 words in that first quatrain of what is perhaps the best-known nonsense poem ever written actually are words. “Translators” have dissected the work and made sense of the nonsense (“brillig,” for example, being 4 p.m., or the time one starts broiling food for supper), which seems to me quite beside the point. Would anyone have remembered “Jabberwocky” had it started “It was 4 in the afternoon …” and shambled along from there?
(I once asked a poet of some middling fame to describe his feelings, his state of mind, when he wrote the phrase “… pissing gin at 3 a.m.” He replied that, if he could have stated it any better, he’d have written it that way in the first place.)
Brilligwriting illustrates a useful trick in writing: If the appropriate word or phrase doesn’t spring to mind, jot in anything – literally anything – and continue on. Come back to the passage later and see whether that elusive word pops out … and if not, consult a thesaurus, or just sit and ponder it for a bit. It’ll come.
(Mr. Nicolay, take a letter please: “Four score and seven years ago, our borogoves, on second thought, make that forefathers – no, fathers – brought forth upon this land, er, continent …)
A word to the wise: Put the stubborn word(s) in ALL CAPS or something, so you don’t overlook it before signing off on a final draft.
Nonsense writing can be an art form (Dr. Seuss: “There’s a wocket in my pocket), yet few people step back with the perspective of time to see where words actually come from. Shakespeare, for example, coined hundreds of common words (including gnarled, frugal and bump) … some anonymous caveman, presumably, the word “ooof”. Hundreds of new words come into common use each year (e.g., waterboarding, vlog, frenemy …).
See also: 15 Words You Won't Believe They Added to the Dictionary
Me? Guilty.
In the process of writing a term paper in junior high school, I inadvertently misspelled “peruse.” Now, this is “back in the day,” when papers were hand-written in blue or black ink; find a mistake and you recopy the entire page. Valor being the better part of discretion, I cleverly decided to append an asterisk to the offending word, and added a footnote that “petruse” was an Old English word meaning “to look over or study.”
My Social Studies teacher, to my enduring amusement, gave me an “A” on the paper, in part owing to my “effective use of footnotes.”
The world’s babble of languages illustrates the tenacity of man’s urge to make himself understood.
Those who agree, please say “Yes” – or si, da, ja, oui, hai, ken, gee or HISlaH (the last is Klingon, thankyewverymuch – and, parenthetically, fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation fondly remember an episode called “Darmok,” in which an alien captain struggles to the death to communicate in his allegory-based language with Jean Luc Picard).
In short, words can be whatever we want them to be. The writer who chooses an odd turn of a phrase takes a risk. He may be ridiculed for his word choice or, in the rarest of circumstances, revered in history as a master.
Those unwilling to hear the voice of inspiration – to bear the slings and arrows of oncoming criticism – are likely to look back and find that their writing has proved of little or no consequence.
In the end, perhaps the immortal Dr. Seuss said it best:
It may not seem like it, but 12 of the 23 words in that first quatrain of what is perhaps the best-known nonsense poem ever written actually are words. “Translators” have dissected the work and made sense of the nonsense (“brillig,” for example, being 4 p.m., or the time one starts broiling food for supper), which seems to me quite beside the point. Would anyone have remembered “Jabberwocky” had it started “It was 4 in the afternoon …” and shambled along from there?
(I once asked a poet of some middling fame to describe his feelings, his state of mind, when he wrote the phrase “… pissing gin at 3 a.m.” He replied that, if he could have stated it any better, he’d have written it that way in the first place.)
Brilligwriting illustrates a useful trick in writing: If the appropriate word or phrase doesn’t spring to mind, jot in anything – literally anything – and continue on. Come back to the passage later and see whether that elusive word pops out … and if not, consult a thesaurus, or just sit and ponder it for a bit. It’ll come.
(Mr. Nicolay, take a letter please: “Four score and seven years ago, our borogoves, on second thought, make that forefathers – no, fathers – brought forth upon this land, er, continent …)
A word to the wise: Put the stubborn word(s) in ALL CAPS or something, so you don’t overlook it before signing off on a final draft.
Nonsense writing can be an art form (Dr. Seuss: “There’s a wocket in my pocket), yet few people step back with the perspective of time to see where words actually come from. Shakespeare, for example, coined hundreds of common words (including gnarled, frugal and bump) … some anonymous caveman, presumably, the word “ooof”. Hundreds of new words come into common use each year (e.g., waterboarding, vlog, frenemy …).
See also: 15 Words You Won't Believe They Added to the Dictionary
Me? Guilty.
In the process of writing a term paper in junior high school, I inadvertently misspelled “peruse.” Now, this is “back in the day,” when papers were hand-written in blue or black ink; find a mistake and you recopy the entire page. Valor being the better part of discretion, I cleverly decided to append an asterisk to the offending word, and added a footnote that “petruse” was an Old English word meaning “to look over or study.”
My Social Studies teacher, to my enduring amusement, gave me an “A” on the paper, in part owing to my “effective use of footnotes.”
The world’s babble of languages illustrates the tenacity of man’s urge to make himself understood.
Those who agree, please say “Yes” – or si, da, ja, oui, hai, ken, gee or HISlaH (the last is Klingon, thankyewverymuch – and, parenthetically, fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation fondly remember an episode called “Darmok,” in which an alien captain struggles to the death to communicate in his allegory-based language with Jean Luc Picard).
In short, words can be whatever we want them to be. The writer who chooses an odd turn of a phrase takes a risk. He may be ridiculed for his word choice or, in the rarest of circumstances, revered in history as a master.
Those unwilling to hear the voice of inspiration – to bear the slings and arrows of oncoming criticism – are likely to look back and find that their writing has proved of little or no consequence.
In the end, perhaps the immortal Dr. Seuss said it best:
Be who you are and say what you feel
because those who mind don't matter
and those who matter don't mind.
Accept that mindset, and perhaps your skin will soon grow thick enough to succeed as a Writer.
Next: An interlude
[For personal writing assistance, go to www.fixadocument.com]
No comments:
Post a Comment