August 12, 2015

Growing your vocabulary by using etymology

I seem to have cracked one of my biggest obstacles to writing well: the excruciatingly slow growth of my vocabulary (have found a way to significantly speed it up, I mean, not crack it). Since I started writing in English, I have tried all kinds of methods to pound new words into my head and failed at each, adding maybe 10 new words per month or so, which was nothing. It got me mighty pissed that I couldn't retain the meaning of words like "inexorable" and "parsimony" and "celerity" and "doff" and "grandiloquent" and more complex words packed with layers of meaning like "egalitarianism" and "idiosyncrasy" and "meritocratic" and the like. I'd open up a new book and every few paragraphs would have to whip out my phone to look up that word or the other or whole phrases like "bona fide" or "tour de force" or "carpe diem" and such. It would drive me bananas that I came across the same words over and over and over again and failed to remember what they meant.

Then over the last month I have been astonished to find that the new system I'm using is finally fucking working! Fucking glorious hallelujah!!!

April 25, 2015

Expanding your vocabulary

by Ksenia Anske

Photo by JoãoBacalhau — Photo by JoãoBacalhau

I have a particular challenge of writing in a language that I learned about 16 years ago, and expanding my vocabulary is on the forefront of it, painfully so. I would love to hear your ideas and tricks on growing it faster, especially those of you who write multilingually. Over the 3 years that I've been writing full-time, I have devised system after system after system to help me. They all collapsed shortly after I started them, but this one stuck and I wanted to share it with you because it might give you a little boost if you're struggling as I do.

Words are our tools. No mater which way you spin it, the breadth of linguistic fluidity shows up in writing time and again. It might look simple at first, but it's the breathing fabric underneath that makes it sound different, rich, fresh, enthralling. Same concepts, same tired expressions can be said so many different ways, it's astounding.

January 24, 2015

How to expand your vocabulary: STEAL IT

by Ksenia Anske

As a native Russian speaker, my biggest issue with writing in English is having a wide and deep and venerable (see? I'm trying) enough vocabulary to express the girth and the breadth and the uber-complexity of my visions. Or, in simple words, bloody know how to bloody describe this bloody scene that bloody hangs in my brain like a picture and I CAN'T BLOODY FIND THE EXACT WORDS TO DESCRIBE IT IN THE EXACT BLOODY WAY I SEE IT. Whew, it felt good to say "bloody" so many times. I must have been born British. Anyway.

I have been struggling with this for almost three years now, and every time I try to devise a new system to learn new words faster. Here are a few.

May 14, 2014

Vary your language, poppets

by Ksenia Anske

This bothers me a lot. Like, A LOT. In my own writing, and occasionally in some books I've read. Which is rare. Because, of course. Books. BOOKS. Published books. They've been edited prior to being published. Wait, before they've been edited, they've been written by writers who possess some kind of a gargantuan wealth of language. Plus, they went through countless drafts. So. Back to my own writing. What I'm talking about is a certain stagnation of prose. Just this inability to break out of the repetitiveness of "She said" and "He said" or "She walked" and "He walked" or "The sky was blue" and "The grass was green" and whatever other traps you fall into, this scarcity of language that you can feel on your skin. The stupor. The torpor. The feeling inside you, that torturous emotion, that image that is so clear yet is SO FUCKING HARD TO WRITE IN COLORFUL DIFFERENT WAYS!!!

Well. Guess what. Variety comes with practice.

VARY YOUR LANGUAGE, VARY IT!

How exactly do you do it?

April 23, 2014

How to read like a writer

by Ksenia Anske

How do you read books? With greed? Devour them? Or skim? Or dive in, here and there, when you have breaks, to snatch out a sentence or two? Or get lost and let yourself be absorbed? I suppose, all of those. Because I know. It's how I used to read too. Used to. Not anymore. It's a curse, in a way, I hate it. But I also love it. I'm a writer now. I can't skim or devour anymore, for two reasons. One, even if I try, I can't help noticing story elements, structure, new words, all these things that permeated my system. I write now. I do the same things. I know. Can't unknow it. It's there. It's like watching a movie and being aware of camera angles, and length of scenes, and continuity lapses, and actor's hair. Or socks. Or both. (Or lack of any clothes.) Anyway. I can't. At first I resented it. Until I realized the second thing, second reason why I can't read fast anymore. I'm learning how to write better, when I read. The more I read, the more I learn, the more I see, the more I read and learn again. It keeps growing like a snowball. Finally, I gave up on reading fast and am now savoring each book and also studying it, like I'm back in college. Only better. It costs next to nothing, I get to sit at home and do it at my leisure.

So, you might ask, how DO you read like a writer?