Your thesaurus can help you be a better writer
I love my thesaurus. It makes me a better writer. It helps keep my writing fresh. Sometimes I leaf through it as if it's the Sears Wish Book.
My husband bought me this thesaurus a few years ago for Christmas and in the last six months since becoming a full time working writer, this has become my best tool.
If I look over my writing and feel bored and as if I'm getting a bit, errr, stale...I'll pick a handful of words in a piece and decide to find an alternate word for them.
Writing Exercise
For example,
"A wide array of options are available"
This is a sentence that I have found myself repeating too often lately.
Thanks to my thesaurus, this can be jazzed up a little by stating:
"A multitude of choices are up for grabs."
If you finish a piece and find that it lacks that flash or flair that you want, decide to change five or ten words with words you haven't previously used.
Feel free to use thesaurus.com if you like but I much prefer my hard copy. I keep it perched beside my monitor as a constant reminder that I do have the ability to continue to improve my writing. I also find that when I'm leafing through, looking for a specific word, other words catch my eye on the way and when I put the book down and get back to writing, I have a whole new sense of inspiration.
Self improvement should be constant in a writer.
Right? Write!
Dana
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1 comment:
I took a class in Advanced Expository Writing in college, and one of the suggestions/requirements of the professor was that we use a thesaurus whenever possible, especially when using verbs like "She said," "he walked," etc. There are so many more descriptive words out there, like "strolled" instead of "walked."
Great post!
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