BY C.M. MAYO — November 8, 2021
UPDATE: This blog was then entitled Madam Mayo (2006-2022).
This blog posts on Mondays. Second Mondays of the month I devote to my writing workshop students and anyone else interested in creative writing. Welcome!
> For the archive of workshop posts click here.
My writing assistant models the concept.
He was tall. He was old. He went to have a nap. Was, was, went. This reader’s asnooze already!
Some examples of livelier verbs:
Some rough-and-tumble cowboy movie would scramble across the screen
–Bill Cunningham, Fashion Climbing
I ebbed down into the darkness of sleep
– Jack London, The Star Rover
In fact, I bought some Ziploc Space Bags (in tropical colours), which are vacuum-resealable bags capable of squishing a huge pile of clothing into one fruity brick.
–Melanie Kobayashi, Bag and a Beret, February 17, 2014, Why Do Laundry When You Have Scissors?
Ooh, squish, that’s just squishalicious!
She didn’t believe in the war, but it wasn’t the soldiers’ fault that they’d been gulped down by it.
– Alice Miller, More Miracle Than Bird
How to come up with livelier verbs? Yea verily, even in the murk of the Present Rhinocerosness, it can be done. If you wish upon the gibbous moon, or a fluff of dandelion, one or eleven may just pop into your coconut! On a more practical level, I can recommend reading whatever you happen to be reading closely, and when you come upon any verb that strikes you as especially vivid and apt, jot it down. You thereby train yourself to become more alert to them. And there’s no law against making use of them yourself.
Just a few of the verbs on my own notecards:
flout
blabber
brandish
get jazzed
baffle
delude
jettison
canvass
pander
abide
degrade
scourge
fluff
fling
ping
ring
zing
For more about reading as a writer, see:
One Simple Yet Powerful Practice in Reading as a Writer
See also my 2011 blog— yes, an entire archived blog:
Reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace.
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P.S. AN OPPORTUNITY FOR WRITERS
The MacDowell Colony is offering a fellowship in memory of the American novelist and short fiction writer Katherine Min. Read more about it here.
P.P.S. Fearless Fabian Jumps Again
I welcome your courteous comments which, should you feel so moved, you can email to me here.
Shake It Up with Emulation-Permutation Exercises
What the Muse Sent Me about the Tenth Muse,
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
Using Imagery (the “Metaphor Stuff”)
