Wordsmith Quotes

I was lingering out on the pavement. There was a missing person inside of myself and I needed to find him . . . I felt done for, an empty burned-out wreck . . . Wherever I am, I'm a '60s troubadour, a folk-rock relic, a wordsmith from bygone days, a fictitious head of state from a place nobody knows.

The Montana sunset lay between the mountains like a giant bruise from which darkened arteries spread across a poisoned sky.

When you feel like throwing rocks, make sure they're ones no one can throw back.

I have offered myself to the inkwell of the wordsmith that I might be shaped into new terms of being.

It's really not about reading a good book.  Rather, it about being transformed by great ideas.

Americans often wonder how this moment could have spawned such extraordinary men as Hamilton and Madison. Part of the answer is that the Revolution produced an insatiable need for thinkers who could generate ideas and wordsmiths who could lucidly expound them. The immediate utility of ideas was an incalculable tonic for the founding generation. The fate of the democratic experiment depended upon political intellectuals who might have been marginalized at other periods.

Of all the smiths from goldsmiths to John Smiths, the most powerful is the wordsmith, because he can influence your emotions and cognitions. And while you are standing there pondering what he said, he can rob you of your gold and your identity.

Your words control your life, your progress, your results, even your mental and physical health. You cannot talk like a failure and expect to be successful.

I love the sound of words, the feel of them, the flow of them. I love the challenge of finding just that perfect combination of words to describe a curl of the lip, a tilt of the chin, a change in the atmosphere. Done well, novel-writing can combine lyricism with practicality in a way that makes one think of grand tapestries, both functional and beautiful. Fifty years from now, I imagine I’ll still be questing after just that right combination of words.

We marry children who have grown up and still rejoice in being children, especially if we're creative. Imaginative people fidget with ideas, including the idea of a relationship. If they're wordsmiths like us, they fidget a lot in words.

Words are a puzzle; put them together the right way and you get something beautiful.

But when he spoke, that great voice of his poured out of his chest in words like the snowflakes of winter, and then no other mortal could in debate contend with Odysseus. Nor did we care any longer how he looked.

It (a singer's voice) sounds as if it was aged in a whiskey cask, cured in an Ozarks smokehouse, dropped down a stone well, pulled out damp, and kept moist in the palm of a wicked woman's hand.

The pen may indeed be mightier than the sword, but the wordsmith would do well to welcome the blacksmith back into the fold, so that artisan craftsmanship the world over may fend off the ravages of industrialised homogeneity and bland monoculture.

For wordsmiths and masters of words, without necessarily being harsh with words, the words have a tendency to shoot straight to the hearts of people, and this either deeply touches them or deeply angers them. Like the apostles in all their loving controversies are those who are masters of words while combining this gift with truth.

When you paint your lips, eye lids, nails or whatever, to look attractive, don't forget your up stairs(intellect) if you leave it behind, i will consider all other colors invalid.

though romantic, he was singularly methodical and detested nothing so much as a ball of string on the floor

[on the Irish] A race of poets and wordsmiths, my ass.

... Pfiffikus, whose vulgarity made Rosa Hubermann look like a wordsmith and a saint.

creative wordsmiths, who need to know the canons of pedestrian prose

Astray from a deep sleep chronic as I write by phonics, like insomnia I will always live the onyx night for revealing, and, upon it, still I'll steal the bright light of day right away just to keep building at speeds hypersonic.

Though this child came in with nothing but excess baby fat, chemical brain waves, and mother and son bodily toxins on his legs, he had a fate fit for a modern day demigod.

From Boston to Bordeaux, revolution was in large measure the achievement of networks of wordsmiths, the best of whom were also orators whose shouted words could rally the crowd in the square and incite them to storm the towers of the old regime.

Trust me. What a phrase. Is it a phrase or an idiom? I was never a wordsmith and I was too far along in life to even attempt to tackle a problem as complicated as words. Do writers struggle as much with words as a painter does with his paint and his brush? “Okay,” it is impossible not to trust a beautiful woman. Even macho noir anti-heroes who talk about staying out of trouble and doin’ nothin’ for nobody always get sucked into intricate snares set for them by beautiful women… I would not be an exception.

The object of poetic activity is essentially language: whatever his beliefs & convictions, the poet is more concerned with words than what these words designate.

I am lover of words... I am wickedly drunk with the magic of words... the poetic nature whispers through and to my very heart and soul.

This is almost always the case: A piece of art receives its f(r)ame when found offensive.

I got that same glorious hit of ecstasy, like the opposite of getting hit in the face with a frying pan.

Creativity is not intelligence, it is the ability to do what you did not know through the use of what you know.

He [Shakespeare] was a wordsmith who loved to act and to see things from many points of view.(...) His genius lay in being able to see all sides of an argument.

Thomas Abrams is magic. He’s a wordsmith, a baby whisperer, a blue-eyed asshole, but most of all, he’s like me: brokenhearted.

I love you,” he says. “I’m not a wordsmith. Not even close. But I’m so fucking obsessed with you, I can’t stand it. I love you. I’ll love you forever.

The cautious wordsmithing of a woman stepping lightly around a man who has the upper hand, and might use it to lash out—no poet ever agonized over the crafting of a sentence more carefully.

All things considered, I’ve learned more from talking to painters than talking to writers. Not that painters are smarter than writers, such is seldom the case, but in conversation writers are inclined to waste an inordinate amount of time either bragging or bellyaching about reviews and royalties, complaining about their publishers, or dissing other authors. Painters, being equally insecure, can likewise come across as boring and bitchy -- it’s tough being creative in a materialistic society -- but since they labor not in vineyards of verbiage but upon ice floes of visual images, they tend to function with fewer inhibitions than the wordsmiths when it comes to vocally exploring and expressing ideas. Since no one judges their speech, comparing it to their written work, they don’t feel so acutely the weight of language.

You can write with clarity and with flair, too. And though the emphasis is on nonfiction, the explanations should be useful to fiction writers as well, because many principles of style apply whether the world being written about is real or imaginary. I like to think they might also be helpful to poets, orators, and other creative wordsmiths, who need to know the canons of pedestrian prose to flout them for rhetorical effect.

I am a master wordsmith. I have the ability to bend words at will and invoke feelings with the stroke of my pen. But I'm yet to master the art of finding the right words to describe what happens in my heart when I see you.

When I first started following writers on social media, I imagined a deluge of profound quotes, writing tips and insights into the plight of wordsmiths. There was some of that. Mostly though, my timeline was taken up with their obsession with coffee: 'I want coffee/I'm having coffee/I've had coffee.' Then came photos of their favourite coffee mug/pot/shop/barista. So, if you've enjoyed a recently-published book, give credit to writers: the vampiric aficionados of the coffee cherry.

Writing is not a job description. A great deal of it is luck. Don't do it if you are not a gambler because a lot of people devote many years of their lives to it (for little reward). I think people become writers because they are compulsive wordsmiths.

For all its breathtaking beauty, the ocean is also a dystopian place, home to dark inhumanities. The rule of law—often so solid on land, bolstered and clarified by centuries of careful wordsmithing, hard-fought jurisdictional lines, and robust enforcement regimes—is fluid at sea, if it’s to be found at all.

To be attacked by a Gore Vidal, or an H.L. Mencken, one of the great wordsmiths of American criticism, while surely unpleasant, must have been oddly exhilarating for the poor souls on the receiving end. I, on the other hand, have the more dubious and prosaic distinction of being a regular target of Ian Millhiser.

The audacity of my sagacity is instrumentality to my successity.

WHAT IS LOST Don't cry, my child What is lost is never gone Hold onto your dreams

LOVE IS ENDURING Love is enduring It is far-reaching and kind It will never fail

It’s not saying something that’s been said a million times before. It’s saying something that’s been said in a way that feels as if it was missed a million times before.

Real writing is about changing lives for eternity rather than entertaining a life for a moment.

Because English has so many words of foreign origin, and words that look the same but mean something different depending on their context, and words that are in flux, opening and closing like flowers in time-lapse photography, the human element is especially important if we are to stay on top of the computers, which, in their determination to do our job for us, make decisions so subversive that even professional wordsmiths are taken by surprise.

The late David Foster Wallace, master wordsmith, author, and essayist, once opened a commencement speech with a droll parable that well illustrates the trouble with normality. The story concerns two fish crossing aquatic paths with an elder of their species, who greets them jovially: “‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water?

Note the tangible characteristics of wise people: • They are slow to talk. • They are quick to listen. • They are always thinking. • They evaluate every message. • Their response is measured and thoughtful. • They are wordsmiths; they do not waste words. • They do not talk to be heard. • They do not speak to impress. • They use words when absolutely necessary. • They use words to reveal knowledge. • They use words to elevate understanding. • Their primary goal is to be understood. • Their secondary goal is to share information.

A voice is a product of the writer’s own Pandora Box of insight, insecurities, bravado, modesty, humility, affection, understanding, and confidence. In short, a voice reflects the writers’ sangfroid. The tenor of the writer’s voice also reflects their insecurities, self-doubt, egotism, testiness, and the ability to identify with their mental and physical infirmities. The inflection that distinguishes a writer’s pitch from other wordsmiths’ tone reflects their collective lifetime of mundane, tranquil, disturbing, and passionate experiences.

Mirror mirror on the wall, you don't know me well at all. Took my number, said you'd call. I tied that line up gag and all. What you see is what you get. Don't reach out to try to pet my wild kind of intellect. It can't be tamed by hand or net. Retrospect. Are we there yet?

Every once in a bestseller list, you come across a truly exceptional craftsman, a wordsmith so adept at cutting, shaping, and honing strings of words that you find yourself holding your breath while those words pass from page to eye to brain. You know the feeling: you inhale, hold it, then slowly let it out, like one about to take down a bull moose with a Winchester .30-06. You force your mind to the task, scope out the area, take penetrating aim, and . . . read. But instead of dropping the quarry, you find you’ve become the hunted, the target. The projectile has somehow boomeranged and with its heat-sensing abilities (you have raised a sweat) darts straight towards you. Duck! And turn the page lest it drill between your eyes.

We must assume, I think, that the forward projection of what imagination he had, stopped at the act, on the brink of all its possible consequences; ghost consequences, comparable to the ghost toes of an amputee or to the fanning out of additional squares which a chess knight (that skipspace piece), standing on a marginal file, "feels" in phantom extensions beyond the board, but which have no effect whatever on his real moves, on the real play.

We must assume, I think, that the forward projection of what imagination he had, stopped at the act, on the brink of all its possible consequences; ghost consequences, comparable to the ghost toes of an amputee or to the fanning out of additional squares which a chess knight (that skips-pace piece), standing on a marginal file, "feels" in phantom extensions beyond the board, but which have no effect whatever on his real moves, on the real play.

All words have to be coined by a wordsmith at some point in the mists of history. The wordsmith had an idea to get across and needed a sound to express it. In principle, any sound would have done - basic principle of linguistics is that the relation of a sound to a meaning is arbitrary - so the first coiner of a term from for a political affiliation, for instance, could have used glorg or schmendrick or mcgillicuddy. But people are poor at conjuring sounds out of the blue, and they probably wanted to ease their listeners understanding of the coinage rather than having to define it or illustrate it with examples. So they reached for a metaphor that reminded them of the idea and they hoped would evoke a similar idea in the minds of their listeners, such as band or bond for a political affiliation. The metaphorical hint allowed the listeners to cotton on to the meaning more quickly than if they had had to rely on context alone, giving the word an advantage in the Darwinian competition among neologisms […] The word spread and became endemic to the community, adding to the language’s stock of apparent metaphors. But then it came to be used often enough, and in enough contexts, the speakers kicked the ladder away, and today people think not a whit about the metaphorical referent. It persists as a semantic fossil, a curiosity to amuse etymologists and wordwatchers [stet], but with no more resonance in our minds than any other string of vowels and consonants.

He missed the women he’d never get to sleep with. On the other side of the room, tantalizing at the next table, that miracle passing by the taqueria window giving serious wake. They wore too much make up or projected complex emotions onto small animals, smiled exactly so, took his side when no one else would, listened when no one else cared to. They were old money or fretted over ludicrously improbable economic disasters, teetotaled or drank like sailors, pecked like baby birds at his lips or ate him up greedily. They carried slim vocabularies or stooped to conquer in the wordsmith board games he never got the hang of. They were all gone, these faceless unknowables his life’s curator had been saving for just the right moment, to impart a lesson he’d probably never learn. He missed pussies that were raring to go when he slipped a hand beneath the elastic rim of the night-out underwear and he missed tentative but coaxable recesses, stubbled armpits and whorled ankle coins, birthmarks on the ass shaped like Ohio, said resemblance he had to be informed of because he didn’t know what Ohio look like. The size. They were sweet-eyed or sad-eyed or so successful in commanding their inner turbulence so that he could not see the shadows. Flaking toenail polish and the passing remark about the scent of a nouveau cream that initiated a monologue about its provenance, special ingredients, magic powers, and dominance over all the other creams. The alien dent impressed by a freshly removed bra strap, a garment fancy or not fancy but unleashing big or small breasts either way. He liked big breasts and he liked small breasts; small breasts were just another way of doing breasts. Brains a plus but negotiable. Especially at 3:00am, downtown. A fine fur tracing an earlobe, moles at exactly the right spot, imperfections in their divine coordination. He missed the dead he’d never lose himself in, be surprised by, disappointed in.

Sung was a land which was famous far and wide, simply because it was so often and so richly insulted. However, there was one visitor, more excitable than most, who developed a positive passion for criticizing the place. Unfortunately, the pursuit of this hobby soon lead him to take leave of the truth. This unkind traveler once claimed that the king of Sung, the notable Skan Askander, was a derelict glutton with a monster for a son and a slug for a daughter. This was unkind to the daughter. While she was no great beauty, she was definitely not a slug. After all, slugs do not have arms and legs - and besides, slugs do not grow to that size. There was a grain of truth in the traveler's statement, in as much as the son was a regrettable young man. However, soon afterwards, the son was accidentally drowned when he made the mistake of falling into a swamp with his hands and feet tied together and a knife sticking out of his back. This tragedy did not encourage the traveler to extend his sympathies to the family. Instead, he invented fresh accusations. This wayfarer, an ignorant tourist if ever there was one, claimed that the king had leprosy. This was false. The king merely had a well-developed case of boils. The man with the evil mouth was guilty of a further malignant slander when he stated that King Skan Askander was a cannibal. This was untrue. While it must be admitted that the king once ate one of his wives, he did not do it intentionally; the whole disgraceful episode was the fault of the chef, who was a drunkard, and who was subsequently severely reprimanded. .The question of the governance, and indeed, the very existence of the 'kingdom of Sung' is one that is worth pursuing in detail, before dealing with the traveler's other allegations. It is true that there was a king, his being Skan Askander, and that some of his ancestors had been absolute rulers of considerable power. It is also true that the king's chief swineherd, who doubled as royal cartographer, drew bold, confident maps proclaiming that borders of the realm. Furthermore, the king could pass laws, sign death warrants, issue currency, declare war or amuse himself by inventing new taxes. And what he could do, he did. "We are a king who knows how to be king," said the king. And certainly, anyone wishing to dispute his right to use of the imperial 'we' would have had to contend with the fact that there was enough of him, in girth, bulk, and substance, to provide the makings of four or five ordinary people, flesh, bones and all. He was an imposing figure, "very imposing", one of his brides is alleged to have said, shortly before the accident in which she suffocated. "We live in a palace," said the king. "Not in a tent like Khmar, the chief milkmaid of Tameran, or in a draughty pile of stones like Comedo of Estar." . . .From Prince Comedo came the following tart rejoinder: "Unlike yours, my floors are not made of milk-white marble. However, unlike yours, my floors are not knee-deep in pigsh*t." . . .Receiving that Note, Skan Askander placed it by his commode, where it would be handy for future royal use. Much later, and to his great surprise, he received a communication from the Lord Emperor Khmar, the undisputed master of most of the continent of Tameran. The fact that Sung had come to the attention of Khmar was, to say the least, ominous. Khmar had this to say: "Your words have been reported. In due course, they will be remembered against you." The king of Sung, terrified, endured the sudden onset of an attack of diarrhea that had nothing to do with the figs he had been eating. His latest bride, seeing his acute distress, made the most of her opportunity, and vigorously counselled him to commit suicide. Knowing Khmar's reputation, he was tempted - but finally, to her great disappointment, declined. Nevertheless, he lived in fear; he had no way of knowing that he was simply the victim of one of Khmar's little jokes.

A writer leads a hyphenated-life with words

In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith recalls a story from Plutarch’s Lives that may shed light on my friend’s inability to quit his job. It’s the story of Pyrrhus, the king of Epirus, a region of Greece. Pyrrhus is planning an attack on Rome. His trusted adviser, Cineas—Smith him calls the king’s “favorite”—thinks it’s a bad idea. Cineas is an impressive guy, a brilliant wordsmith and negotiator whom the king often uses to represent himself. But even though he has the trust and ear of the king, it’s usually not a great idea to tell the king he’s making a mistake, even when you’re a favorite of his, so Cineas takes a roundabout approach. Here’s how Cineas begins in Plutarch’s version: “The Romans, sir, are reported to be great warriors and conquerors of many warlike nations; if God permits us to overcome them, how should we use our victory?” Well, says Pyrrhus, once we conquer Rome, we’ll be able to subdue all of Italy. And then what? asks Cineas. Sicily would be conquered next. And then what? asks Cineas. Libya and Carthage would be next to fall. And then what? asks Cineas. Then all of Greece, says the king. And what shall we do then? asks Cineas. Pyrrhus answers, smiling: “We will live at our ease, my dear friend, and drink all day, and divert ourselves with pleasant conversation.”   Then Cineas brings down the hammer on the king: “And what hinders Your Majesty from doing so now?” We have all the tools of contentment at hand already. You don’t have to conquer Italy to enjoy the fundamental pleasures of life. Stay human and subdue the rat within. Life’s not a race. It’s a journey to savor and enjoy. Ambition—the relentless desire for more—can eat you up.

All things considered, I’ve learned more from talking to painters than talking to writers. Not that painters are smarter than writers, such is seldom the case, but in conversation writers are inclined to waste an inordinate amount of time either bragging or bellyaching about reviews and royalties, complaining about their publishers, or dissing other authors. Painters, being equally insecure, can likewise come across as boring and bitchy -- it’s tough being creative in a materialistic society -- but since they labor not in vineyards of verbiage but upon ice floes of visual images, they tend to function with fewer inhibitions than the wordsmiths when it comes to vocally exploring and expressing ideas. Since no one judges their speech, comparing it to their written work, they don’t feel so acutely the weight of language. The

In order to recognize the Truth, you have to separate yourself from the Truth; and to explain the Truth, you have to separate yourself from the recognition. This is why a wordsmithed Truth is nothing but a shadow of the shadow of the Truth. If Buddha had yawned instead of holding up a fower, would that gesture have been any less representative of the Truth?

Zapffe, Schopenhauer, and Lovecraft fared well enough without surrendering themselves to life-affirming hysterics. This is a risky thing for anyone to do, but it is even more risky for writers, because anti-vital convictions will demote their work to a lower archive than that of wordsmiths who capitulate to positive thinking, or at least follow the maxim of being equivocal when speaking of our species. Everyone wants to keep the door open on the possibility that our lives are not MALIGNANTLY USELESS. Even highly educated readers do not want to be told that their lives are an evolutionary contingency and nothing else, and that meaning is not what people think it means.

In spite of the concerted press campaign to transform me into some upstart wordsmith who had inexplicably won the pools ('Osborne mellows now he's on £1,000 a week'), I was not earning great sums from any of the three plays now that tow of them had finished their Broadway runs.

Gansey understood on a basic level that Henry made outrageous and offensive fun of himself because the alternative was storming into a room and flipping tables onto the money changers behind him

Destined to die without issue,” added Terry, who fancied himself a wordsmith. His real name was Something the Third. As if that wasn’t bad enough, “the Third” translated to “Tertius” in Latin. Then “Tertius” shortened to “Terry.” So obviously that was what they called him. He kept a private journal in which his feelings were recorded, possibly. The possibility was widely mocked.

STOP WORDSMITHING AND START DECIDING

the fact about marriage is that it's never perfect, there is always struggle but you have to pick who you willing to struggle with

God don't call the qualified, He qualifies the called

sometimes we fall because we don't struggle to prevent ourselves from falling

to live a life worth calling a legacy is to live by principles

the value of a man increases only when he has a consistent relationship with God

If you are GOOD enough to let go of what you think is BETTER, God will grant you what is BEST

you write your best lyrics when you most vulnerable

I was just sitting and just realised how much she loved me The least I should have done was fight for her, for our win This is a great mistake about love but I have learnt from it Heart break sucks but it eventually gives you much to eat

The room was large and airy. Shelves lined the walls on three sides, shelves that stretched way above his head, bending under the weight of the hundreds of books stored there. The fourth wall was covered in old newspaper, yellowed and faded but still readable. The room had become a shrine of sorts, he supposed. The books he had saved before the last days. He ran his finger along the spines: Shakespeare, Dickens, Keats, the ancients, all there alongside books from the last century. Nothing wasted, nothing lost. His private collection. He would find it difficult to let them go when the time came, but he would let them go. He couldn’t risk them being found at a later date. There were few incidents where people managed to decode words after Nicene, very few. Nonetheless, he wouldn’t take that chance. They would be destroyed along with everything the wordsmith had managed to salvage. For a second, images of the wordsmith filled his head, but he pushed them away. He turned his back on the books and walked across to the wall of newsprint. Here was a potted history of the past hundred years. The warnings. The signs. Global warming. Water levels rising. It was incomprehensible even now that man had just ignored it all. Young people talked about the Melting as if it were a single event, but it hadn’t been like that. The earth had been heating up for years. His finger touched one of the news sheets. Scientists were warning of an alarming acceleration in the melting of the polar ice caps. They predicted a dramatic rise in sea levels. That was back in the twenty-first century! He shook his head. He chose another article from around the same time. The writer was warning about the disappearing ice caps. “Until recently, the Arctic ice cap covered two percent of the earth’s surface. Enormous amounts of solar energy are bounced back into space from those luminous white ice fields. Replacing that mass of ice with dark open ocean will induce a catastrophic tipping point in the balance of planetary energy.” Torrents of words had followed. Words from politicians assuring people there was no such thing as global warming. Words from industrialists who justified their emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere. Words to hide behind. Words to deceive. Useless, dangerous, destructive words… He drew back his hand and punched the wall, hurting his knuckles and leaving a trail of blood on the yellowing paper.

The original charge of both the academy and the church was to be places that nurture the mind and the spirit. That mission involved both institutions deeply and consistently in producing and practicing poetry and in the play of the mind and imagination that required. For a good part of Western history, churchmen were expected and trained to be wordsmiths. What we see in the best of them - the theologians and the scholars, as well as the poets - is a capacity for play. Not humor - now always - though that is certainly one mark of the Spirit, but the receptive, intuitive readiness to recognize grace in any form and respond, the willingness both to obey and to suspend rules according to the demands of the situation - in a word, wit.

Shots in the dark sometimes hit.

Life with out a dream is Hell. Go for what you want - and you're winner. Dont listen to the nosayers they never get it write. There are so many bullsh*t quotes out there and motivational speeches, grind and work twenty three hours a day. wake up at five and run. Well i'm not a morning person person. Yet I will tell you strieght - if you want to stand aside of the crown and achieve. Then working hard and sacrifcie will be part of it. One in ten thousand finish a manuscript, one in twenty thousand get it edited and offer it up for scutiny. I have written seven so far and the words do come quicker and you learn the tricks of the trade, but the only way you will be come a confident wordsmith is by "writing and writing and writing. Good luck Steve

Why not? And for your information, the original wordsmith who penned the terrible purple prose was Edward Bulwer-Lytton in his novel Paul Clifford—not Snoopy.

nWhat an irony The wordless seek mentorship of the wordsmith And the orators seek mentorship of the silent masters Get self realized... get #Mickeymized!

BIG IDEAS There are such small hands In this world that are molding Such big ideas

Words can be honed to crafted perfection by the finest wordsmiths. Yet, if we trust solely in the expanse of them to explain this God of ours or articulate our experience of Him, we will have brutally destroyed the very things we are attempting to explain. And if I should do that, no words can describe how badly I wish I had no words.

supplemental elements, such as a soundtrack, videos, or images to make that emotional connection that they weren’t able to make through wordsmithing alone.

I get excited about stringing old words together in new ways.

The poet e. e. cummings, for one, challenged the assumption that poets are essentially wordsmiths manipulating the rules of grammar, syntax, and semantics. “The artist,” he wrote, “is not a man who describes but a man who FEELS.” Gary Snyder, also a poet, has expanded on that theme, saying that to write he must “revisualize it all. . . . I’ll replay the whole experience again in my mind. I’ll forget all about what’s on the page and get in contact with the preverbal level behind it, and then by an effort of reexperiencing, recall, visualization, revisualization, I’ll live through the whole thing again and try to see it more clearly.

You know what’s scary,” she says, pointing her spoon at him. “You’re a journalism major, aren’t you? Shouldn’t you be a wordsmith?” “Shouldn’t you be a voiceless mannequin?” he retorts back. “Touché.

Why do so many of us, when we sit down to write, sound like word processors rather than wordsmiths? Why do we spew the slogans of the consumer culture we work for, rather than sounding like the bards we want to be?

It’s not saying something that’s been said a million times before. It’s saying something that’s been said in a way that’s feels as if it was missed a million times before.

And he said... ...a master wordsmith has no need of a sword for his words will suffice.

1. If you think of something clever by all means write it down. 2. Ask yourself, “Am I including this because it provides the reader with a memorable and delightful piece of evidence to prove the point of my text, or is it beside the point even though it reveals what a good wordsmith I am?” 3. If you decide to murder that passage, remember that you have another choice, you can save it in a file or journal. It may work well in a different context. 4. You may not be able to make these judgements on your own. Trust an editor or a writing friend to help.

Our job as fellow wordsmiths is to inspire, educate, entertain and encourage. That is how we make an impact and influence the world and readers in a positive way.

You have a way with a proverb, old friend, as befits a wordsmith of your calibre." Compliment? Or not? With Sherlock Holmes, it was hard to tell.

Wordsmiths, that is, people who live in a universe of words and are seriously obsessed by them, have often published lists of their most favoured words. The author, Williams Espy’s list contained: 'gonorrhea', ‘lullaby', 'meandering', 'mellifluous', 'murmuring', ‘onomatopoeia’, 'wisteria'... For me it was cornucopia. Roll these words round your tongue, they are sharp and silvery against the teeth; whisper them, speak them full-throatedly; these words delight your senses like a sip from a vintage Beaujolais.

It was time to seek strategic alternatives. Sound like jargon? That’s because it is. Silicon Valley is full of nonsense phrases just like it. For instance, when someone says that he’s leaving to spend more time with his family, what that really means is my ass got fired. When someone says this marketing copy just needs some wordsmithing, what they really mean is this sucks and needs to be completely rewritten. When someone says we decided to pivot, what they really mean is we fucked up, royally. And when a company decides to seek strategic alternatives, what they’re saying is: We’ve got to sell this sucker. And fast.

The difficulty rating of words in the Scripps National Spelling Bee is based on a very complicated mathematical algorithm involving a linguistical analysis of the origin of the word, the syllables, and expected phonetic construction. Just kidding. A couple of wordsmiths sit around a table and throw out difficulty ratings like they’re judging a swan dive.

For me, in “slogan speak,” I simply say that my company exists to help people start, run, and grow a profitable personal brand business. That’s the big problem I’m trying to solve. When I have the liberty to use a few more words, I say, “I teach an 8-step Blueprint to help you showcase your unique expertise and build a highly profitable, personally fulfilling business.” Wordsmithed even further, the last thing I say on my podcast episodes for years has been: “Live your message, love your work, leave your mark on the world.” None of these one-liners were born from sitting around trying to think of a clever slogan.

Now, get the fuck out of here.” My father, the wordsmith. ****

A good book delivers a great message.  And while such a message should touch the reader in a good way, it must transform them in a great way.

I present a full proof method for discovering whether or not your being a writer, a natural wordsmith, is your gift or just your talent. Get high! If it is your gift, you'll know. Better you find this out first then the reading public.

In the backyard, he had a stone pool with a hot tub located at one end, several feet above the pool. The warm water from the hot tub overflowed via a stone waterfall into the pool.

The real me is probably not the me that you perceive me to be.