Words, words, words

"Eager--and doomed--as words are to serve you, they want to do so in lively, dashing, dancing, swooping, curving, crossing, flapping capacities, in sense and harmony with one another. Each time a word shows its face, to countenance its fellows, new possibilities reveal themselves. Language lives, breathes, moves with you . . ." -Karen Elizabeth Gordon

Every word is a choice. That's the beauty of writing, I believe. We have a choice for every single word we put down on the page. Not a right/wrong choice, but a choice of possibilities. For each word that appears, that shows its face, we have certain other words that can follow. Each step in a sentence takes us a little further into the cave and we have to figure out which path is possible. Then again, we can always back up and start again.

I hope you're enjoying the reading so far. She certainly has fun with the language (perhaps overly so at times), and she does offer up the basic points that we want to have down for thinking about (and talking about) language use.

Looking forward to our talk on Tuesday. (Do grammar quizzes help at all in retaining information?)