One thing shared by all writers is their love for and frustration with words.  The following activities are the types of things writers reflect upon, record in their minds,  and eventually include in their writing.  Make a section in your journal for each of the following categories and add words to each category as you discover them through reading, listening, observing and sensing life around you.

Experiment with improving your style by adding more of these interesting words to your own writing;  however, heed Daniel Defoe's warning:  The perfect style is one "in which a man speaking to five hundred people, of all common and various capacities, Idiots and Lunatics excepted, should be understood by them all."

Black-smocked smiths, smattered with smoke / Retiree - chinless and slouched, gray-faced, and slack of jaw/ The Mathematician - enamored so of form, of calculation / gnomes / grandfather, sleepless in the room upstairs / alchemist / garrison / gastrologist / hipster / octogenarian / deep-eyed children / apostle / citizen / artisan / applicant / amorous leader beautiful and young / good child / I am two fools, I know / executors / the elf-child / the demon off-spring / inhabitant / gossips / recent successors / magnificent potentate /  illustrious creature / iron-souled truth-monger /

highfalutin' / his talking destroyed her / whipping /

zamboni / unruffled sheets / bramble / thunderbolt / seance / the clear intensity of dawn / escalator / ancient nomadic snowmen / seafoam / elmy hedge / A noiseless patient spider / the bars and the gates and the degradation /  dappled things / vacant eye / a liquor never brewed / epoch / lineage / perplexities / divine and mysterious truth / dusky grief / the ethereal medium of joy / contemplation / recollections / impetus / bric-a-brac / golden summits / cars, once steel and green, now old / cattail fluff / meads - forever crowned with flowers / foiled sleep / the muddy shallows /

monotonous / homogenized / sultry / adoration / abdication / lamentation / abduction / visionless / somber / dissension and strife / whey-faced anonymity / relative clumsiness / unvanquished / apparent failure / apparently with no surprise / approaching death / ardent in love and cold in charity / arrogance repressed / as difference blends into identity / when emotions too far exceeds it cause / the range of choice / ultimatums /  I got religion and steadied down / impossibly alone / At lucky moments we seem on the brink.  (W. H. Auden) / Apparently with no surprise / Constantly risking absurdity / much madness is divinest sense / the marriage of true minds / the world is too much with us, late and soon / the dreary burden of a heart unyielded, because unvalued and unsought /  a surer ground of mutual happiness bathed in sunshine / a vague restlessness / obstinately silent / radiance of her goodness /  a safety in derision / in shadowy quarantine / one thin frail line of friendship / beyond earshot of others, furtively / the sad waters of separation / eternal truth, almighty, infinite / charm - the measure of attractionís power / four great walls have hemmed me in / fruit of loneliness /

unrippled lakes / the fresh ruffles of the surf / bristled and sallow fields / the august and ancient square / a sky suddenly mid-February blue /  bison-dotted plain / the dim frozen fields of night / the empty garden beds / the lonely beach / shimmering meadows / snowy pastures / the desertís drought and sand / the stony ridges / marshlands /  shuddering dock / summer-fevered skies / antlered forests / lonesome grove / when the deep blue of heavens brightens into stars / resting ships /

dizzied / wimples / a-begging / momentary glance / sprawl / drowsing /  spiced /  abate /  loitered /  splotched / warbled / rattled / bequeathed / embroider / had long since recognized /  bespattered /  speckled /  succor the afflicted / summer baked the water clear / baffled /  snarled and rattled /  cease your labors /  gently dip, but not too deep /  wreathe my dear friendís brow /

whitewashed / misty / sage-grown / measureless / reverend / luxurious / unravished / frazzled / palpable and
mute / disdain / authentic / shadow-like / recluse /  lavish richness of golden fancy / sober-hued / noiselessly / whimsical bubbles of air / doleful / the burning brazen sky / billowy / bliss / capricious / a darkening brilliance / odoriferous / dappled /

 "Time wounds all heels."

 ìHappiness (is) a shallow emotion reserved for people who lacked brains.î

In his book of essays, Cold Comfort - Life at the Top of the Map , Barton Sutter describes the smell of Duluth as a nice "bittersweet blend of industrial pollution and evergreens."

"Ants, although admirable, are rather aggravating."   (Walter R. Brooks)

Annie Dillard says this about her childhood:  "I got in trouble throwing snowballs, and have seldom been happier since."  (American Childhood)

Here are some others:
/ a vague restlessness excited and troubled him / fatally attractive / varied and constant / admiration and regret / dazzling uncertainty / We are the silences that speak / the scholarly and the illiterate, the envied and the ugly, the fierce and the docile /  sensuous coldness / opulent dryness / mysterious clarity / alluring purity /
 
 

Cold Comfort - Life at the Top of the Map by Barton Sutter

"The Anatomy of Happiness"  Ogden Nash

Still Waiting for a Dull Moment

"I would be pleased if this book . . . pointed the way to some odd, forsaken place that makes the tuning fork beneath your breastbone hum."  (Barton Sutter)

The asphalt was a hot, blackish river.

. . . both those sick pale faces were bright with the dawn of a new future.

Sordid secrets / weary waiting world / He clasps the crag with crooked hands / failed to fulfill my fantasies / dank death the rubble of the ruined house / the rubble or the ruined house / faces, forms, and phantoms / save or slay / woodland ways / midsummer morning / wasting sickness worn / country cousins / foreign freighter / the great Mississippi, the majestic, the magnificent Mississippi / fair fugitive /  frightfully friendly / lily-livered / dreary and desolate /  toilsome, thoughtful / wounded, wasted, wronged / truest test / the sound of singing floated faintly audible / the Lady with the Lamp / horrors of the hospital /  not as facile fancy painted her / regret and remorse / sympathy and sense / dominion and decrees / careless content /

            A Limerick by Carolyn Wells

            A tutor who tooted a flute
            Tried to teach two young tooters to toot.
            Said the two to the tutor,
            "Is it harder to toot, or
            To tutor two tooters to toot?"

"Did thy sapphire shallop slip?"  (Grace Hazard Conkling)

1.  Follow the steps below to write a paragraph with sounds as the focus:
            A. Begin with a topic sentence that indicates your in-
                    tentions to do something with sound.
                    Example:   "Most places have as much to hear
                    as to see:"
            B.  Name the objects that produce the sound.
                    Examples:  bells / horns / gulls / waves
                    / boat horn / rubber tires / river
                    / dogs / pig /
            C.  Add descriptions of the sounds, using onomato-
                    poeia as much as possible.
                    Example:   The voiceful windings of a river /
                    the unnatural barking of the dogs /
                    the tongueless echo in the pastoral vale /

                    Onomatopoeia is the use of words that sound like
                    the sound heard.  Examples:  swash / smack /
                    whirring / hover / thundering / whine / burbling /
                    yakking / all full of chitter noise / squeals /
            D.  End with an interpretation sentence that explains
                    the effect the sounds has on you.
                    Example:  "The rich mixture of these sounds
                    is so suggestive that it has been
                    known to drive some people crazy.

Write your own paragraph:
 
 

2.  Read poetry to hear sounds:

"On break, I usually read Conrad Aitkenís poetry aloud.  It was pure sound unencumbered by sense.  If I ever caught a poemís sense by accident, I could never use that poem again."    Annie Dillard

Find some Conrad Aitken poetry that has good sound value.  Write the words down and recite the line aloud.
 
 

"As a rule, manís a fool."  (Joseph Capp) / mile-wide tide / Beside the rail, despite the gale / Can a mere human brain stand the stress and the strain? /

Streaks of white light / all the sails hang limp / an avalanche of lumber /

The jungly smell of winter / the block was bluish with diesels / the odor of metal lingers in your nose all day /

"Across the sky the daylight crept."  (Coventry Patmore) / "All day the waves assailed the rock."  (Emerson) / The summer trees were crying / The dusk captured the street / The birches that stand in their beggars row / The birches that dance at the top of the hill / A day bloated with statistics / Freckled August, drowsing warm and blond / The car is heavy with children /Litotes

After we knew that we were dead we sat down and cried a little.  (Louis Dubek)