DREAM TO BE A ' WORDSMITH '

 

To write means to have proficiency on language.  Whether you choose your mother tongue or a foreign language, you must have a reasonable command to knit your thoughts into an interesting narrative.

 

When I decided to show to the world that I could write, I was already a writer confined to my inner chambers of heart.  Then I was in the habit of writing on my mind-slate constantly, so I did not find it tough when I started actual writing for my blog started way back in March, 2011.

Swami Vivekananda is my guiding light to hone my language abilities.  I read his Chicago lecture countless times in my final year of graduation.  If you read those immortal words, a new power unleashes into your system.  What mesmerized me in that particular lecture is the kind of his select words before the American audience.  In fact that speech of Vivekananda drove me to read his biography and further inclined me to show special interest on philosophy.   Book after book, my interest multiplied to read more of Vivekananda .  I was completely swept by Swamiji’s inspiring passages.  I wondered his super-human capabilities, especially his photographic memory power.   What ignited a lot is this timeless quote : If you can think that infinite power, infinite knowledge and indomitable energy lie within you, and if you can bring that power, you also can become like me.

When I look back those troubled times by abandoning studies and started reading Swamiji’s literature, I felt that I  have bigger agenda in my life.   I realized my strengths that could not only inspire myself but could inspire others as well through my words.  When you read Swamiji’s works, you would stand up with enthusiasm in search of your own inner power. 

Since, I already decided during  my college years (1990s) to write on consistent basis, I started building word power.  Initially, I used to write a few new words and their meanings daily on loose-old-science record sheets of my elder sister.  I also began to collect paper clippings of The Hindu (newspaper) column: Know Your English    Till this day, that habit is continued with some minor interruptions now and then.

When I started writing seriously in 2011, I felt high deficiency of apt words to fit to the context.  For almost one year, I simply used to  refer dictionary to know new words,  but only on 4/22/2012,  I recognized the need to open a dedicated  note book to write news words with their meanings on daily basis and  I wrote more than 3500 words.   Some of those words are well into my muscle memory.  Simultaneously, I also started observing the sentence structures in newspapers and magazines to grasp the style and started working on my own style.

Like Rome was not built in a day, vocabulary should be built brick-by-brick.  There is no magic wand that makes you super-human on word power nor can it be instantly downloaded into your brain. 

Vocabulary is the basic building block of language upon which the empire of a writer is built.  If you use third-class words, poverty flows into your prose and readers would skip to next best one.   So those  who dream big to write  must first recognize the need to build vocabulary on daily basis!