September 23, 2018 – “I have actually been writing in my mind my whole life.”

         About a half-hour ago I just blurted that aloud – to no one in particular – probably just to myself as my husband wasn’t paying attention.  But, I did. Sometimes just saying something out aloud brings more clarity to me.

“Isn’t that the truth?” I questioned myself aloud as well.

         I had just been reading something in this month’s Writers Digest. 

         “My fingers trembled slightly as I picked up a red notebook emblazoned with the face of Hello Kitty.  My diary.  My heart raced and my hands clenched around the book, as if I were riding a rollercoaster making its first slow ascent up the big hill and holding on for dear life.  I was in no mood to reminisce on the insipid prattlings of my youth – there had already been enough of that with my mother the night before – but I felt an itch somewhere at the edge of my memory, and I opened the notebook’s cover.”

         The above is from an article:  Case Study: Suspense by Karen Krumpak assistant editor of Writer’s Digest.

         I remembered something I’d written to a dear friend in the last few weeks that had the allusion to a rollercoaster as well.

         My version:

“ . . . is a deep fear, an all-consuming fear.

The only way I can describe it is like a cheap roller-coaster ride.  The long wait in line to board a paint-chipped garish carriage and then the jolting chug, chug, chug to the top.  When the sudden dip at the top by gravity, you are expecting it and dreading it. The inevitable gasp, the scream of pleasure - or is it really pain? Then the slow, often stagnant coast back to the terminal to tediously unload with the clinging realization it wasn't "fun", wasn't even an "experience". 

         And, then I remember saying to a doctor one day when he asked if I was having headaches.

         “ . . . sort of - off stage, in the wings, waiting to appear.”

         I remember the look on his face – astonished – then he smiled and nodded.  Obviously, I had described it to his satisfaction because when he spoke to me during the rest of the medical consultation– he had compassion and understanding.  Not the usual theory of “it’s all in your head” that I’d witnessed on many occasions before.

         I have one friend that will often stop me mid-sentence to ask what a word is that I am using she is unfamiliar with.  The first time it happened in front of my brother, Ken, when he was visiting and he thought I was tossing around “hundred-dollar words” is his phrase.  He chipped in, “I’ve never heard that either.”  I have searched my mind these last few minutes trying to think of that word, but I have failed.  But, it is a word that I read years ago in a romance novel when I was a teenager.  [I probably cracked the dictionary at the time as I often did back then.] Words with whole-paragraph meanings, meant a lot to me back then, and now - even more.

         The current offending word was – “denude” as in strip of all coverings or surface layers, to lay bare to erosion, and to strip land of forests.

         I was mentioning to this gal that I was a bit more concerned about the winds coming from Hurricane Florence since like her experience of last year, a forest had been denuded behind her house and a big tree came down in her yard once her neighbor’s forest was gone and the ground around her big tree had been saturated.  The lack of the forest to reduce winds had taken its toll on her big tree and it came crashing down on her house. I was concerned that I would experience this same result.

         Recently, this summer, the gentleman that owns about 12 acres that wraps around the front section of the property of the development I reside in, and which my land abuts to, had his forest timbered.  [Not the Kudzu owner, the other one.] Prior to the timbering, I could only see green leaves, [or wood trunks in winter] when I looked to the east, now in summer I can see blue sky and a few, left-standing trees.  I was concerned that violent storms from that quadrant of the compass would be stronger now that his forest had been denuded and the force of the wind wouldn’t be broken or reduced by his once standing forest causing havoc with my trees.

         So, I used the word denuded and instantly I was interrupted and I was more startled by this interruption because it had happened to her.  It is the perfect word – it is succinct – and in this day and age with all the “green people” on earth in the media for the last two – three – or even more decades to not know the word “denude” took my breath away.

         How do the words “roller-coaster” and “denude” relate? Well, they are both visual words and they should be considered common words among everyday-ordinary people.  Kids know what a roller-coaster is and teenagers in school must know what denude means – they learn it in science class when they learn about erosion.

         I keep hearing “write simply” in order to get your work published.  I want to scream from the rooftops – why? Why can’t I just use the correct words that say more in one word than three sentences?  What is wrong with being a wordsmith? What is wrong with beautiful language?  What is the dummying down theory going to get us in the end? Are we going to have to speak like cavemen in grunts and moans?

         Does anyone really want to hear that the bad guy rushed out of the house and raced off in a car?  Wouldn’t you prefer he rush out of the house and squeal away in a green S-type Jaguar? [Later, when the detective interviews the witness and who says, “I noticed it as it flashed by - had one of those silvery figures of a jaguar on the hood.”] The detective notes it as that vintage characteristic will make his search easier.

         I don’t talk “cut all the trees down” I say, denude.  I don’t just say, “car” I describe it.

         Again, I have been writing all my life in my head and when I speak, I am even writing then.

         P.S.  I don’t like to be bookmarked while you crack a dictionary for a word you don’t know. Look it up on your own time, not while I am speaking.