Writing Tips

Appearing Intelligent With Words

This chapter is about using some creative ways to increase your vocabulary, so you can enhance your writing and look more intelligent when (like me) you might not really feel as smart as others seem to think you are.

Some of us get compliments about our intelligence but never truly feel like we're adequate. Some of us never get those compliments and don't feel adequate. Hell. Some of us are insulted about our intelligence and made to feel inadequate. Let's take control of that, shall we? We've got to stop kicking ourselves while we're down, and we need to learn to feel amazing about our work. To be even more proud of it. Even if it's a literal (figurative) crap on paper. What matters is the desire to become a better writer, to know more, and to learn how to very beautifully display it so that it has just the right effect on our readers.

Even if you feel this gained appearance of intelligence is nothing but an illusion, it is still an ego booster! Especially when you capture others with it, or they think you're a genius among them! (Been there, it's kind of funny. But I'm moderate and humble and will always joke about my dim-witted ditzy nature first.)

Technically, you really are that smart. Your words are beautiful, and they matter. Even when they are the wrong words, they are still useful, and they still propel you to the next step in your journey. So stop hating on yourself, if you're prone to do so! Keep going without shame or fear! For you are a writer, and that makes you an incredible, multi-leveled, analytic thinker. You are one of us.

And do not despair if you are a silent thinker or a slow speaker. I am both, and there is a way forward. To be on the same level as other intelligent people we admire and strive to be like. What do I mean by silent thinker and slow speaker?

I don't talk the way I write half the time because, to write intelligent sentences, I often take much longer to write something than I do to speak aloud. Even weirder? Half the time my brain is absolutely quiet.

No verbal, internal audio there, except for wordless tracks, like the very clear memory of the sound of wind rustling leaves, or the sound sand makes when it pours over gravel. I can look at a bag of cereal and remember the exact sound it makes in about ten different types and shapes of bowls from twenty years ago, even though I cannot remember but two words of your ten-word sentence you said five minutes ago. My natural state of thinking is in pictures, emotions, and folly. I don't know why it is that way with me, it just is. This is actually quite common.

For many years while growing up, it was difficult for me to think a single spoken thought at all--and I was an A+ student with mad art skills, I was a music prodigy with piano, and I was a pretty decent writer (not great with the execution or presentation, but amazing with the ideas and emotions behind it that I was able to convey).

Having been almost completely unable to think verbal thoughts still contributes to a bit of a stutter every now and then when I talk or read, and it also contributes to the occasional seizure-pattern full-brain electrical storm that causes me to need to step back and gather myself again if I have just two high-intensity things happening at once. (Even my eyes start to vibrate as my brain shorts out. I can't speak, I can't think, I can't move. Reset is the only option.) Despite it all, written words are my jam. They are the music to my twitchy fingers, despite the very strange silence in my head.

A silent brain doesn't mean a person isn't intelligent, it simply means there are other patterns of thinking. Some go direct to audio, and others take various other routes to take in some scenery before the final destination is reached. The beauty of this is that we're all capable of those big words and fancy descriptions. We just have to find what works for us to be able to employ it, and it becomes more natural with time.