My love affair with words

"You're such a writer!"

Years ago a college friend said that to me.  Simply because I'd used the word "blustery" to describe the day's weather.  "Normal people don't say 'blustery'," she insisted.

Well, then, I'm not very normal.  Because I use "blustery."  And also words like "trepidation" and "parse."

I can't help it.  I love words.

I can't tell you exactly when I started reading, but I know by about fourth grade I was in an advanced reading class.  Whenever we'd have the MS Read-a-Thons I always had to most books read (and money raised).  Back when the old high school library was closing, they had a huge book sale, and I enlisted friends to help me buy 100 books.  I told them "anything about horses or Native Americans."  Out of that insane pile of books I only remember two, both of which I really liked - "There Really Was a Hiawatha" and "Otto of the Silver Hand."  I still have the latter, but have unfortunately misplaced the former.

I remember trying to write plays when I was in grade school, one of which had characters based on Halloween costumes I had at the time, which included Zorro and an "Indian princess."  And in Junior High I entered a writing competition with a short story where the main character wiped out in a skiing accident and came to on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.  

I've come a long way since then.  I still love stories about horses and Native Americans, but my library now also includes a couple books on forensic science, several mythology books and horse breed books, the entire series of novels based on "Quantum Leap," quite a few based on "CSI," all of the Harry Potter books and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and almost the entire series of Spenser novels by the late author Robert B. Parker.  Only a couple books by Stephen King ("Four Past Midnight" and "Thinner") but a large collection of Dean Koontz novels, including his recent Frankenstein series.

And my writing reflects my varied tastes in genres - mostly fan fiction (Stories based on television series), but there's some fantasy and straight-up fiction sprinkled in there.  At any one time I've got at least a half-dozen different stories going; currently I have two "Buffy: the Vampire Slayer" fics that I'm actively working on, a story about a love affair between a young king and his royal taster, one set in somewhere in the past in a very rural setting that's told from the point of view of a ghost, and another about a popular singer who keeps spotting the same young woman, crying, in the audience of his concerts.

One of the biggest reasons I love Dean Koontz is because he...weaves words.  He doesn't just say "It was a stormy night."  He makes you see the storm.  For example, the opening sentence from "Lightning," the first of his books I ever read: A storm struck on the night Laura Shane was born, and there was a strangeness about the weather that people would remember for years.  Right off the bat you know this is no ordinary storm, and you're drawn into the story to find out why it's so notable.

Wednesday, January 12, 1955, was frigid, gray, and somber.  At twilight thick, fluffy snowflakes spiraled out of the low sky, and the people of Denver huddled in expectation of a Rocky Mountain blizzard. 

With just those three sentences, he sets the scene so vividly that you're right there, feeling the cold wind bite your cheeks.  And I try to do that with my own writing.  I want to start my stories off with a line or a sentence, or a short paragraph, that draws the reader in and makes them want to keep going until they reach the end.  Like the beginning of my personal favorite "Buffy" fic, "Immemorial":

He paced the confines of the small cave, shoulders hunched and head bowed to avoid knocking himself out on the low ceiling.

He stopped and studied the bent figure before him.  She was stooped with age and from living in the cramped cave for years.  Her long, unkempt hair was a dirty white, one eye was clouded, and her hands were so thin, the long digits gnarled with arthritis and the nails thick and yellow, that they more resembled the claws of some great bird than the hands of a human.

She muttered to herself as she poured a foul-smelling liquid onto the pile of orange powder on the floor in front of her.

“And you’re sure this will work?” he asked, not for the first time.

Words can be magical or mundane; it's all in how you use them.