Through the Shadowlands . . . and back again

For the writers out there.

Have you ever sat there staring at a sheet of paper (okay, or the computer screen), reading over the sentence and grasping desparately for the "right word" to put next? You mull over various words, deciding that certain ones hint at what you mean, but do not fully encompass what you desire to say? I cannot tell you how many times this scenario has happened to me.

I ran across this quote some weeks ago and it explains more beautifully and simply than I could why such moments occur:

"The right word is as important to the writer as the right note to the composer or the right line to the painter. . . . A writer needs an 'ear' as much as a musician does. And without this ear, he is lost and groping in a forest of words, where all the trees look much alike."
Sydney J. Harris, Last Things First 266 (1961).

Here's to all the writers in the world, madly grasping for just the right combination of words, misunderstood by others who argue that one word "will do" just as well as another . . . we know better!

posted by shadowlands7 @ 8:51:00 AM