In the recent film, Come See Me In The Good Light, a documentary about the life, art, and death of beloved poet Andrea Gibson, there’s a scene where Gibson talks about putting together their first book and how their publisher, exasperated, told them, “Andrea, all these poems have the same words rearranged in a different order!” Later in the scene, they say, “It was always important to me to write a poem that people wouldn’t need a degree to understand…why write a poem that’s over somebody’s head?” Gibson was a populist poet, one whose primary concern was creating work which was easy to engage with; their work touched millions, and despite their editor’s feedback, they were largely disinterested in expanding their vocabulary.
Like Andrea, I think it’s vital for our writing to connect with an audience of non-writers. I think of writing first and foremost as communication, a way to convey information to a reader, be it solidarity in times of struggle, comfort in times of grief, or simply a call to action in times of oppression. I’m also someone who is deeply fascinated by words themselves, their history, the subtle differences in meaning between synonyms, even the sounds each makes as it leaves our mouths. As a result, going through a manuscript and rooting out the terms and expressions I use too often is a regular part of my editing process. Maybe you, like Andrea, have all the talent and wisdom it takes to create genuinely important and emotionally vast work using a comparatively small vocabulary, but for the majority of us not possessed of this rare gift, working against repeated use of specific language is a great way to shore up a manuscript, and challenge yourself as a creative. To this end, I recommend using one of any number of word cloud generators like this one. Sites like these allow you to cut and paste whole documents (or multiple documents) and provide you with a list of your most common words, how often they appear in the text sample, and provide an easy-to-understand graphic illustrating which words are your heaviest hitters. Over time, as you observe which words you use the most often, you may find it helpful to keep a list you can reference when you edit—not when you write.
One of the goals I set for myself while putting together my first book of poems was to not use any single word more than 7 times throughout its 108 pages. Shown here is the resulting word cloud I used when editing my own published book.
As you can see, I strongly favor simile over metaphor in my work (hence the giant-sized “like” at center), which is something I’m hoping to address in my next collection. What do you imagine you’ll find in your cloud? Give this exercise a try—you might be surprised at what you find out!
–Sean Patrick Mulroy, Web Editor
This blog post, along with many others, is also available to read on the Spellnotes section of our website.
If you don’t follow on social media yet, you can find links to all of our channels here.
You can also listen to our seasonal issue inspired playlists on our Spotify channel.
If you’d like to read more of Spellbinder’s work, you can subscribe here. Our magazine is available in both PDF and paperback formats. Click here to learn more.