Category Archives: Prose

Most Beautiful Words

A reposting of a list of 100 Most Beautiful Words in the English Language has me wondering what my own favorites would be.

For example, bucolic doesn’t make my list. Its meaning, in a lovely rural setting, certainly qualifies, and that definition chimes beautifully in the ear, but bucolic’s cacophonous sound suggests it would mean sick cow.

Nor do I care for long latinate words when a more accessible word will do. I prefer cat lover to ailurophile.

I  concur on onomatopeia and panacea, but my favorite word has to be lullaby.

Remember when Bert and Ernie of Sesame Street sang the L song? Bert had “light bulb and lamp post,” while Ernie advocated the “lilting and lovely ones” like “laughter, lullaby, lollypop.” So Bert the boring came up with “linoleum!” The humor came in juxtaposing a melodic word with its pedestrian meaning.

For me, the most beautiful word captures the precise meaning you’re looking for, its phonetic symbolism matches its meaning, and its cadence fits the prosody of your passage. Good thing we can rummage around in this language with the largest vocabulary available; with a half million words to choose from, sometimes we can have it all.

What would you nominate as a most beautiful word?

Dialogue Skills

Can you write believable and interesting dialogue? It’s a skill we all need. In fiction, it’s a given. Drama, more so; poetry, maybe. And nonfiction? You’d be surprised. The most academic writing requires us to introduce other researchers and quote them intelligently.

Kathy Temean (who also deserves thanks for leading an SCBWI chapter) shared this great set of Dialogue Tips.

You know you’re an amateur if your characters walk on and say, “Hi, Bob. I haven’t seen you since your sister married my uncle before they died returning from their honeymoon in that shipwreck off the Faroe Islands.” If so, please begin with Kathy’s Tip 1: “Good dialogue is not weighed down by exposition.” (Hey, that one also ignores my “Question the Preposition” advice.) Master all seven of Kathy’s tips and we’ll want to listen to your characters–or your fruit fly geneticists–the whole book long.

Letting Your Goal Carry You

There is such joy in keeping a personal commitment. I keep blogging, logging in these little laps around the language. I keep breathing. At the end of our 21 Day Meditation Challenge, the Chopra Center’s davidi asked, “Who could have believed that this would be so effortless, fun, entertaining, engaging and powerful?” It does add up beautifully, when we engage one day at a time, plus another, and another. When the goal is simple enough and the support strong enough, the wave carries us along.

And davidji added, “As far as I know, there are eight billion people who opted not to join us over these three weeks, so you are the bold ones! You are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

How’s your own resolution coming? Time to recommit? Revise? Or celebrate? Is your goal simple enough to be achievable, discrete enough to be parceled into your daily routines? One page a day is a long manuscript a year. One line a day is a poetry career. One kindness a day, a stronger relationship. One book read a day, your expertise.

The year is still young. What do you want to do with it day by day?

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