Italia, Lombardía, ca. 1475-1500
Fuente: https://ica.themorgan.org/
To begin, I must say that I consult them frequently, assiduously, and repeatedly when I write, so as not to repeat, reproduce, or relapse into worn-out or overused words.
And please excuse the bad joke in my first paragraph.
Now, seriously, having a thesaurus literally at my fingertips is a great help, and recently I had a need to consult it for reasons I’ll leave for the end.
I confess that repetitions, in my case, are one of those “blunders” that constantly escape me. On other occasions, the thesaurus helps me find sharper, more precise, and accurate words, precisely to avoid what I just did: over-adjectivizing.
One of the most effective pieces of literary advice I’ve ever learned was offered to me by the Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro (1893-1948). More or less, she said: “If an adjective doesn’t give life, it kills.”
I try, but sometimes I feel like I can be too flowery—”permitted sentimentality,” my mom would say.
Another of my stumbling blocks is punctuation. It’s very easy, especially with commas, to overuse them, or underuse them.
The best example of “underuse,” or rather, non-use, I remembered last June 16th (Bloomsday, Leopold Bloom in Dublin) while flipping through James Joyce’s impossible-to-read Ulysses. Only once have I had the patience to wade through Molly Bloom’s monologue: more than four thousand words without punctuation. Oh!
But all this dissertation about synonyms, adjectives, and punctuation is relevant for a very simple reason, one I hope you’ll allow me to gloat without judgment.
It happened last Sunday, when it was announced that my fourth grandchild is on the way. A new heart began to beat in my family.
Believe me, I feel happy, blissful, content, satisfied, joyful, radiant, fortunate, and fortunate, not to exaggerate.
And may Vicente Huidobro forgive me.
Today she shares her “impulsive meditations” from Calgary, Canada, where she lives.
leonorcanada@gmail.com