I Guess

It has just occurred to me I may be living in a constant state of fret, at least while I’m writing. It’s a low level worrying. I don’t know if it’s good or bad. It’s probably more accurate to say I live in this fretfulness when the subject of writing is anywhere near.

I know I worry about the right word. The problem is I believe words, at their best, are inaccurate symbols. For object, words can get pretty close; there is a certain agreement about what objects are called. For instance, we can all agree what a square box is, but anything beyond the most basic description becomes problematic. A heavy square box or a big square box dark square box opens things of to the matter of subjectivity, if I know what that means, if you think it means the same thing as I do, the words heavy, big, and dark are subject to the experience of the person reading the word.

An Olympic power lifter, and my wife, Jackie would have different opinions and experience with the word heavy, and probably also with the word big. They could have similar thought around the word dark, though you never can tell. Context helps as neither one probably would not think the box had dark thought.

So worrying about the right word is one thing. Another is fretting about whether anyone will care. Some of this goes back to childhood and is just dysfunctional nonsense, hoping people like me and all that stuff I’ve made a great deal of progress living behind. Some of it is legitimate. I’m by far not the best speller in the world a spell check helps, but knowing how to spell is better. I do know there are dictionaries, but I am a creative guy and my ability to misspell a word is legend. Some times I give up because I can’t find them. For those of you with a similar affliction there is a little book put out by Random House called THE BAD SPELLER’S DICTIONARY.

Then there’s vocabulary. Mine’s not bad, but it’s not the best either. I know the general rule is to write as simply and clearly as you can and I try not to use ten-dollar words, but sometimes when you’re trying to talk about complex things or you need to make subtle differences, you pay what you have to pay.

And then, whenever I talk writing, it’s like I’m talking about it for the first time, waiting to hear what come out of my mouth to see if I still agree with after I’ve said it. Come to think of it, that’s true whenever I talk. Sounds like I’m still afraid of saying the wrong thing, I guess.

mm