THE RIGHT WORD

We have all struggled to find  the precise word to express our thoughts.
The appropriate word to convey our message.
The perfect nuance to complete our sentence.

The right word.

We struggle and play with words..  We fumble and flirt with words.
Sifting our options, we may open our dictionary, search our thesaurus,  or check our personal word lists.

Like a diva in a dressing room, we begin to try on words to fit our linguistic figures, discarding style after style, word after word.

We looking for that  je ne sais quoi.

In the Columbus Area Writing Project, several of us have recently formed a new writers group.  We each need to submit our pages to the group members prior to our next meeting so that we have time to  read and comment on each of our pieces,

I am currently rethinking/writing/rewriting/finishing a piece on retirement that I had abandoned a while ago in frustration.

This group has given me the motivation to take a new look.  As I worked with the passage below I considered several options before settling on the word insidious.

It was Katherine Norris who named these surprising, strange thoughts and feelings for me.  Acedia.

The ancient and insidious indifference, the inexplicable restlessness, the paralyzing inattention--acedia that plagued monks.  The spiritual faltering that chased them into doubt and fear and… small sins.

The noonday devil...

Choices before me included sinister, devious, treacherous, crafty, sneaky, deceptive.  Deceptive is the word I had originally used as a place holder while I searched for the right word.

Ultimately, I liked the way  insidious implies almost an unseen seeping inserting itself-- asserting itself-- and I also liked the alliterative sound of insidious indifference.


 When we are struggling to find a word,one of the most helpful tools for writers is a thesaurus.

And the man behind the thesaurus is Peter Mark Roget. If we entered his name in his own lists of words we might also enter synonym beside it.

His Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases has been in continuous publication since 1852. Unlike modern versions written in alphabetical order like  dictionaries, instead, his original publication was a complex network of classified lists arranged by concepts and ideas.

To examine his 1912 version which maintains the categories and classifications of the original click here.

To see a page of his original manuscript housed at the Karpeles Manuscript Library and read his preface click here.

There are many modern and accessible versions of Roget's Thesaurus.

A quick search online or at your favorite bookstore or will generate a long list of options for you.  One convenient electronic version (Kindle), Roget's Thesaurus - Definitive Edition , maintains Roget's categories, his original structure and is also completely searchable.

The complex catalogues and networks of words developed by  Roget have much to say about how we think and communicate. He addressed this in the introduction  to his work

The use of language is not confined to its being the medium through which we communicate our ideas to one another; it fulfils no less important function as an instrument of thought; not being merely its vehicle, but giving it wings for flight.  Metaphysicians are agreed that scarcely any of our intellectual operations could be carried on to any considerable extent, without the agency of words.

We connect words as we build concepts. Semantic networks influence our ordinary thought, daily speech, our academic considerations and conversations, as well as our specialized and disciplinary thinking and writing.



Networks and Knowledge in Roget's Thesaurus, Werner Hullen examines Roget's work in relationship to linguistics, philosophy and history, as well as his influence in other countries.

Hullen also compares several versions of the thesaurus, as well as examining several specific entries in detail considering the cultural and political implications.

For  a comprehensive history and exploration of the far-reaching influences of Roget's Thesaurus, this is an excellent resource.


And finally, now enter The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus.

 Jen Bryant and Melissa Sweet have created a magnificent picture book for all ages,  a stellar work of art-- an autobiography which narrates Roget's story, captures his love of words, and beautifully and visually honors his devotion to listing, cataloguing,  and connecting words, concepts, and ideas.

We follow young Peter Mark Roget on his sometimes lonely journey with books and words. We watch him as a child of eight start to write his own book---this is where his famous lists began.

On one of my favorite pages, Bryant and Sweet tell us and show his thinking:

But
Peter's
word
lists
were
not
just
scribbles.

Words,

Peter
learned
were
powerful
things.
And
when
he
put
them
 in
long,
neat
row,
he
felt
as if
the
world
itself
clicked
into
order. 

The Right Word.

Roget has been helping us in that search since 1852.

How do you find the right word?

Related Post:

 Collecting Words

Today's Deeper Writing Possibilities

Select a piece of writing in which you have been struggling to find just the right word for a sentence or phrase.

Use a thesaurus to identify several viable choices.

Write a short essay or poem or experimental form examining the  nuances of the word choices, the appropriateness of the words, considering  the content, context and container of your writing.

WE ARE ALL ALIKE, WE ARE ALL DIFFERENT

  

So much of our living and loving,  teaching and talking,  thinking and planning is focused on noticing and celebrating differences.  

We make an effort to assure that each child living  in our home feels individually special and valued  as a unique person.

We strive to  make certain that each student in our classes recognizes herself in the books we share, the films we use for content-area learning, the examples we choose, the quotes we offer, and the daily general walking and talking we do in our collective spaces.

In the current educational climate in which we find ourselves-- expecting everyone to jump through the same hoops, use the same curriculum (tightly scripted in many cases), pass the same tests, and so forth-- I think that it is important to remind ourselves and our students that there are, indeed, unique and wonderful differences that we each display and experience, and that these are cause for celebration.

Recently, however, one of our  teacher consultants reported that a student in her class said that we should be spending more time focusing on all of our similarities, instead of constantly reading and talking about our differences. Other members of the class all agreed. 

This comment reminded me of something one of my mentors told me as I was just starting to work on my book.  He remarked that my writing prompts tended to require harder-darker-search-your-soul writing, rather than the "happier" sort.

I guess is some respects he was right.  We are all too thrilled to examine our happier, pleasant, and positive moments, but less ecstatic about turning over the stone that covers our deeper selves. Yet, that is often where the substantive, more meaningful, deeper writing lies.

Likewise, I  guess I also fall into the let's look at the differences category,  rather than we are all alike category.  I believe our uniquenesses make us interesting.

But perhaps, my colleague's students are right, just as my mentor was right.
Perhaps we do need to focus more on our similarities.

Perhaps by first establishing our similarities, the points where our sameness intersects, we can then return to the differences with a renewed and more genuine appreciation-- with the samenesses we have already identified, those similarities that bind us together, and the likenesses that foster our wanting to know each other and understand the differences-- providing a foundation for  collective exploration.

Perhaps we must immerse ourselves in the Me too's before we can honor the many Not mes.
And maybe we first need to identify the I agrees and I think the same things before we wrestle with and for the bones of contention.

When I think about my teaching, this was  always the pattern.  We established the points of our intersections, before beginning to examine our diversions.

One of my favorite tools for initiating this discussion with younger and older kids alike is We Are All Alike... We Are All Different, created by the .   

In both the original and newer edition,  this book examines both similarities and differences.

The book's simple structure can be easily imitated, just as it is, for the youngest writers, and also can be used as a supporting structure for creating a more difficult pattern by older writers.

We are all alike.
We all....
We are all different.
Some of us...
Some of us...

What do you...?

The repeated pattern deals with people-- our bodies, our families, our homes,  our food, as well as our likes and dislikes.

This vimeo makes the pattern clearly visible and becomes  a perfect conversation starter:


We Are All Alike...We Are All Different from KC on Vimeo.

As an additional writing possibility, I offer you an idea shared by one of our  teacher consultants in a past summer institute. This interactive writing activity will also generate alike and different teacher consultants in a past summer institute. This interactive writing activity will also generate alike and different thinking and writing. 

We began by writing Where I Am From poems using George Ella Lyon's original poem by the same title as a model and mentor text.. This generated thinking and writing about our differences, our I Am Also From poem. 

(For additional resources for writing about our lives, see my previous post, Poetic Memoirs )

We are all the same.  We are all different.

But science says we are more same than different.

Genetic researchers have consistently reported that the amount DNA that we all have in common is 99.9%.  What does this mean as we think about people and their differences?.  What does this mean as we classify and sort people,  as we include and exclude folks?

This piece of research may initiate new conversations, inquiry and writing.

More recent findings have lowered this common number to only 99.0%, but to me this is still a remarkable amount of similarity, considering our visible and apparent differences.  The newer, lower number does not significantly change the conversation we might have around the fact of shared DNA.

And finally, as we consider likenesses and differences from a variety of perspectives, I offer the eerie image of sameness presented in A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine .

In Chapter 6- The Happy Medium, L'Engle describes the planet/city of Camazotz in which everything is the same, and everyone marches to the same beat, literally.

Below them the town was laid out in harsh angular patterns. The houses in the outskirts were all exactly alike, small square boxes painted gray. Each had a small, rectangular plot of lawn in front,  with a straight line of dull-looking flowers edging the path to the door.
Meg had a feeling that if she could count the flowers there would be
exactly the same number for each house. In front of all the
houses children were playing. Some were skipping rope,
some were bouncing balls.

 Meg felt vaguely that something was wrong with their play. It seemed exactly like children playing around any housing development at home, and yet there was something different about it. She looked at Calvin, and saw that he, too, was puzzled.

"Look!" Charles Wallace said suddenly. "They're skipping and bouncing in rhythm!
 Everyone's doing it at exactly the same moment."

This was so. As the skipping rope hit the pavement, so did the ball. As the rope curved over the head of the jumping child, the child with the ball caught the ball.
Down came the ropes. Down came the balls. Over and over again.
Up. Down. All in rhythm. All identical. Like the houses.
Like the paths. Like the flowers.

Then the doors of all the houses opened simultaneously, and out came women like a row of paper dolls. The print of their dresses was different, but they all gave the appearance of being the same. Each woman stood on the steps of her house. Each clapped. Each child with the ball caught the ball. Each child with the skipping rope folded the rope. Each child turned and walked into the house. The doors clicked shut behind them.

As a child, this was the only part of the book that I later remembered--it was that disturbing to me..

When I reread the book as an adult, I was surprised to realize that the remembered text was such a small passage, tucked in the middle of the book about so many other ideas.

What about this sameness freaked me out as a kid?  I couldn't have explained it then.   I don't know that even now I can define the  factors that raise the hairs on my neck and make my stomach hurt. as I reread this passage from my past.

Perhaps the disturbing factor is the unrealistic mandated sameness that we now  face in education.

Perhaps that  radical 1% where we differ in our DNA ever strives to assert itself.

When is sameness valued?  When is it less desired?

We are all alike. We are all different.  What does this  mean?

Today's Deeper Writing Possibilities

We have been taught since childhood that we are each unique and  our diversity is cause for celebration.

How are you like other people you know?  in your family?  among your friends? among your colleagues?

How are you different from people you know?

What likenesses and differences do you value?  Which seem to be hindrances?

Write a poem or personal essay exploring your similarities and differences to others.

Write a persuasive essay considering the roles of likenesses and differences in our society.
Consider the  positive and negative aspects of noticing, acknowledging,  celebrating, fostering, or even   mandating sameness or differences.

LOOKING BACK FROM HERE

Looking back from here, what do you see?

What do you remember?

When you consider your childhood, what memories quickly take you back to past times and finds and wonderings?

Which moments stand beckoning you to re-enter, revel in-- or revise?

Which moments did you misunderstand or not comprehend at all at the time-- or maybe still?

What moments do you want to forget?

We can return again and again to our childhood lives and selves.

Our early years supply us with endless events, situations, relationships, memories, and ideas  to examine.

In Jaqueline Woodson's latest book, Brown Girl Dreaming, she  returns to a time filled with familiar national and regional history, as her story and her family's story weave in and out of good times, southern traditions and  social injustice,  northern migration and struggles, popular culture and religion,  racial progress and love. Woven through her  free verse and narrative poems are ten numbered haiku- all entitled How to Listen.

We are, indeed,  privileged to listen to her life, remembered and contemplated.

The first and final lines of the opening poem set the mood and tone:

I was born on a Tuesday at University Hospital

Columbus, Ohio

USA-- 

a country caught

between Black and White....

...I was born in Ohio

but  the stories of South Carolina already run

like rivers

through my veins.

She takes us back through her poems to her little-girl love of writing and we watch her grow, within the complex context of her life, into the writer we know and love today.

Likewise  another of my favorite poets, Marilyn Nelson, examines her childhood from the wise perspective of "now" in How I Discovered Poetry.  Considering her young life against a similar background as that of Woodson, Nelson uniquely considers events and situations that, as a child, she did not always understand.

Growing up in a military family during the civil rights era, she considers not only her life and times, but her growing awareness of writing as her avocation.

In the Endnote, Nelson explains that the poems, 50 unrhymed sonnets, explore:

... (her)growing awareness of personal racial identity .. set against the tensions American experiences during the fifties....Each of the poems is built around a "hole" or "gap" in ..understanding.

Which  form would be appropriate to explore your life?
Nelson's sonnets?
Woodson's haiku and prose poems?

As you consider your life in a poetic light, my previous post, Poetic Memoirs,may be a helpful resource.

Or would a graphic novel better help you capture and examine your younger life?

I was delighted to discover El Deafo by Cece Bell and David Lasky, a graphic novel that explores the life of the author, beginning with going to school with a bulky Phonic Ear hearing aid strapped to her chest.  Her survival is accomplished as she" becomes" a superhero, " El Deafo, Listener for All"  

Ironically, the characters of the book are rabbits with huge ears

Her poignant and graphic memoir reminds us of the loneliness, frustration, and sadness that accompany dealing with a difference and disability as such a young age.

In a recent blog post, Terry Thompson, who experiences moderate hearing loss herself, shares how this book brought back all of  the above feelings, but also brought her delight and relief that "Somone is telling my story. Someone gets it. And I was reminded that I was not alone."

Click here to read Thompson's entire post about El Deafo, Hearing Things Differently,.

All children with identify with the difficulties of fitting-in, regardless of their individual and personal abilities or differences.

Many of us enjoy talking with our mothers, our grandmothers, our aunts, and other relatives about their respective childhoods. We all know and laugh together at the ever-growing I walked 10 miles to school stories that our parents and their parents proudly share, as they admonish our perceived weaknesses, laziness, or whatever generational target is at hand at that moment.

Each generation will delight in Childtimes: A Three-Generation Memoir by Eloise Greenfield and her mother, Lessie Jones Little, as they tell their own stories and that of Greenfield's grandmother.  In the opening of this treasure, Greenfield explains  the value of exploring juxtaposed childhood lives:

People are a part of their time.They are affected during the time they live by the things that happen in their world. Big things and small things. A war, an invention such as radio or television, a birthday party, a kiss.  All of these experiences shape  people, and they, in turn, help to shape the present and the future. If we could know more about our ancestors, and the experiences they had as children, and after they had grown up, too, we would then know  much more about what has shaped our world.

Talk to your folks.  Listen to their stories.  Lay them down in writing beside your own.  Think about the rich result.

What did our favorite writers experience in childhood?

One of my favorite writing mentors, Ralph Fletcher has written extensively-- novels, poems, as well as excellent texts on the writing process for both children and teachers.

His account of childhood  as the oldest sibling in his large Catholic family is full of adventures and memories, told with gentle humor. Kids and adults, alike, will delight in his story, Marshfield Dreams: When I Was a Kid.

Finally, I  offer two additional resources that bring childhoods forward to our time, so that we can travel back, explore, compare, learn -- and gain wisdom. When I Was Your Age: Volumes I and II: Original Stories About Growing Up edited by Amy Ehrlich offers collected accounts of childhood and teen years written by some of our favorite YA writers.

At my final school assignment,  I led a teacher writer group.  During our first year together, we focused on memoir writing in our own writing and also with our students.  These volumes became major sources of mentor texts for this writing.

Volume 1

Volume 2

Volumes 1 and 2

           

What do you remember from your childhood?

Today's Deeper Writing Possibilities

Our childhoods provide us with endless writing ideas.

We can  explore events, situations, relationships, geography, memories and ideas that shape our now and who we are.

Looking back from here, what do you see?

What do you remember?

Which moments stand beckoning you to re-enter, revel-- or revise?

Which moments did you misunderstand or not comprehend at all at the time-- or maybe still?

What moments do you want to forget?

Write about your childhood.  
Try a poetic memoir and a personal narrative. Try an essay or longer autobiography.

Talk to several other members of your family about their childhoods--your parents, grandparents or other relatives or close friends.  Write a narrative or essay about their childhoods in juxtaposition to your own childhood.