Acrostically SpeakingWith the zeal of a pack rat, I latch on to words. Intending to later “take care” of my words, I stack them in the sort-and-file corner of my brain. Well, “later” becomes a week, then months, and before I know it, five years have passed and my stack has metamorphosed into a heap of I-know-I’m-gonna-need-these-someday words. I know I’ll never be able to find the words I’ve buried there. I trick myself with acrostics. (An acrostic is usually a poem in which sets of letters (as the initial or final letters of the lines) taken in order form a word or phrase. To read excellent acrostic sonnets by Erik Bartholomy, go to: http://members.aol.com/bartondox/poem1.html) For example: say I’m a financial planner/investor, and I want to write about money in a new way, but I’ve used up my financial planning words. So, I start to dig: I write “money” vertically like so: M Now, quickly and with as little thought as possible, I write words that begin with “m” to the right of my capital M. If I stop writing for even a second, I have to move to the next letter. M: marketing monopoly mongrel mincemeat mortar miniature motivation mint I perform this exercise with O, N, E, and Y. Next, I give my unearthed words a good snap, (cough cough) and weave them together. Here a few examples of what I came up with:
I now have some phrases to play with and inspire me to write other financial planner/investor text. They may not end up in my final piece, but they have done a lot to make it stronger and more effective. I also use the acrostic technique to search for titles, subtitles, subheadings, or fiction character traits, and to warm up before other “serious” writing. Faye Quam Heimerl © 2011 Faye Quam Heimerl of Quam Editorial will help you sort through your word heaps to bring out the message that’s truly you. Contact Faye at Faye@QuamEditorial.com or call 303-503-3530. |
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