What is one thing you can’t live without?

A daily prompt asked, “What’s one thing you can’t live without?” And the perfect answer came to me right away.

It’s words. More specifically, odd words like O, whingeing, gooseflesh.

Those are just a few examples of the queer, mostly outdated, words I’ve fallen in love with over the years, and I can’t imagine giving them up. Not even when they introduce a little confusion for my readers.

(Don’t worry, I shan’t risk dusting off the family slogan for this one, though it also fits this prompt almost perfectly.) I’ve said that particular phrase one too many times already. Instead, I’ll try coming up with one of my very own by the end of this blog.

Anywho, my peculiar vocabulary comes from all sorts of places. Sometimes I pick up a word while reading, which isn’t particularly strange, considering how much time I spend with my nose in a book. Literally. I’m addicted to the smell. Other times, I’ll hear something in a movie or from someone in a video, and a word I’ve never thought twice about will suddenly become one of my all-time favorites.

Take “gooseflesh,” for example. I’d never heard anyone refer to goosebumps that way until one day I heard the Lion Whisperer, a white guy living in South Africa, say it. I fell in love almost immediately, and I’ve been using it ever since.

Then, there’s the way I spell “oh.” You might’ve noticed I tend to write it as a simple “O,” something I picked up while reading Jay Kristoff. Funnily enough, his use of the word actually bothered me quite a bit at first. But somewhere along the way, as I worked my way through his Nevernight trilogy, that irritation became affection. By the end, I’d fallen in love with the simplicity of it and adopted it as part of my own writing.

That’s one of the things I find so fascinating about language. I can sometimes trace a particular word or writing habit back to the exact person or book that introduced me to it. And once I notice one of those influences, I start wondering how many others I’ve picked up without even realizing.

I’ve only recently begun making a conscious effort to keep track_^[1] of them, and I wish I could do the same for ALL my writing habits. But if I’m being fair to myself, that’d probably be impossible, considering how much media I’ve consumed over the years.

Of course, not everyone shares my affection for peculiar words. I once had a disagreement with a penpal over my use of “whingeing.” He thought the word introduced unnecessary confusion for readers, which I could understand. But I didn’t think the word was nearly as difficult to make sense of as he did.

Here’s the passage we were discussing:

Like the daddy who bore me, I’m a wallower. I tend to wallow. I whinge worse than our backdoor hinge, which whines so loudly it doubles as my blind dog’s GPS. (Silla’s so intent on gobbling cat poop that she often loses track of herself in the yard.) Repeatedly opening and closing that door usually does the trick. My emotions become me. There’s no sleeve to rest my heart upon; my transparent skin reveals all for anyone brave enough to look…

O Me, O My: S’more Wallowing and Whingeing

Now, I don’t expect everyone who reads that passage to be familiar with “whingeing, whinge.” I couldn’t even tell you where I first encountered the word myself. But when I fell in love with it, I fell hard. (As per usual.)

And I wasn’t entirely dismissive of his criticism, either. I took his advice and made sure the meaning was clear within the sentence, even managing to give it a bit of rhyme. Between wallowing and that whining hinge, I thought there was enough context for the reader to understand what I meant.

He disagreed. He still thought clarity mattered more than Voice or style, and I couldn’t understand why the two had to be mutually exclusive. I wasn’t insisting that readers oughta decipher obscure vocabulary simply because I happened to like it. I’d already made an effort to accommodate his concern; I even agreed he was right about clarity, conceding that his suggestion had improved my graph. I just didn’t think that effort had to end with abandoning the word entirely.

I could appreciate what he was telling me without agreeing with his final judgment.

Unfortunately, the disagreement didn’t end there, or rather, everything ended there. When I continued to hold to my opinion, he became frustrated with my refusal to change my mind. He decided to stop discussing writing with me altogether. We’d had some genuinely interesting conversations, and I’d come to value his perspective, even when it differed from my own. So that abrupt ending hurt my feelings, and it wasn’t because we disagreed over a word.

He’d reminded me of my Papa and our deep conversations about life and the universe. The subject matter was different, of course, but I’d enjoyed that same opportunity to exchange ideas with someone whose opinions I respected. But my Papa would never get frustrated with me for disagreeing with him in such a way. So, I suppose he wasn’t very like him, after all.

Anywho, Kinsey, 101: Trust your instincts, and don’t be so quick to consider your quirks something that needs correcting. When someone you respect disagrees with your choices, listen to what they have to say. Consider whether their criticism has merit, and be willing to change your mind if it does. But don’t assume their opinion must be right simply because you value it, or because they’re more learned than you or have more years on you.

I guess that’s my slogan, then. And considering how many of my favorite words I’ve borrowed from other people, it’s nice to have come up with something of my very own.

[1] This habit came directly from Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir, where she suggests keeping a little notebook for keeping track of this very thing. That’s where I store all my new influences.

inspo: prolly the easiest “inspo” section I’ve ever written — a daily prompt: “what’s one thing you can’t live without?” // my collection of peculiar words // Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir and her suggestion to keep a notebook of influences // Jay Kristoff’s Nevernight trilogy (“O”) // the Lion Whisperer (“gooseflesh”) // deciding, firmly, that clarity and Voice don’t have to be at odds // mostly, a disagreement with an old penpal over “whingeing” that got me thinking about the relationship between clarity, Voice, and trusting my own judgment

Kinsey Keys

aspiring memoirist rummaging through my noggin, stubbornly clutching the past to my chest like it’s a newborn babe starved for mother's milk.

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