The Writer's Poke

The Oxford English Dictionary contains over 600,000 words. Simply put, no other language comes close. Spanish, for example, only has 100,000 words. Here’s the sad news: The richness of the English language more or less goes to waste. The average English speaker recognizes somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 words.  But guess how many words we actually use of a regular basis? According to Richard Lederer, 96% of average conversations conducted in English are comprised of the 737 most common words! Listen to a conversation the next time you’re in some public place, and you’ll probably be able to quickly confirm these findings.  Maybe we don’t need 500 words for “big” when “big” will do just fine, but if that’s true, isn’t it interesting that the English language keeps growing by 1,000 words each year? The language itself continues to grow larger, while the average English-speaker's vocabulary seems to shrink year after year. Who takes the time to study voc...

A study published in the Journal of Research in Personality concludes that the shoes you wear say a lot about you. Just by looking at your shoes, a complete stranger can apparently tell if you’re introverted or extroverted, if you have a difficult time forming long-lasting relationships, and so forth. Personally, I’ve been wearing Asics Gel Running Shoes for the past two years. I currently have three pairs in rotation, and although I own other shoes, I almost never wear them. What do other people think about my preference of footwear? I have no idea, but I doubt if anyone would reach the right conclusion, which is this: I have foot issues. Specifically, I have gout inflammations maybe once or twice a year, and so I wear comfortable shoes at all times to be nice to my feet. I do support the idea that what we wear or the products we prefer can tell others something about us. In The Art of Fiction , John Gardner quips that the details and preferences authors give t...

1. Is it possible to visit all of the countries in the world?  Yes it is. Chris Guillebeau spent the last five years visiting all 193 countries recognized by the United Nations (or more than 270 countries, regions, and territories as calculated by the Traveler’s Century Club). How did he do it? Was he independently wealthy? Nope. He was just a regular guy who wanted to do something and found a way to do it. http://chrisguillebeau.com/3x5/ 2. Is it possible to walk the entire Great Wall of China? Yes it is. Robert Loken spent 601 days walking roughly 6000 kilometers (just under 4000 miles).   How did he do it? First, he thought about it for a long time – 20 years. Then, he made a commitment to do it. Obviously someone doesn’t just say, “I’m going to go walk the Great Wall of China,” and board the first plane to Beijing. It takes quite a bit of planning, and a willingness to temporally put your life on hold. But when Loken was ready, he quit his job, sol...

One of the challenges of being human is learning how to deal with our emotions. Life is difficult, no matter who you are. And although I might not have lived your life or shared all of your experiences, that doesn’t mean that I can’t emphasize with the challenges you’ve faced. No, I may not know you, but you and I are both human, and so we share a human perspective. We both recognize how difficult it can be to let go of the traumatic experiences we carry around with us from our pasts. The traumas may not be the same, either in kind or degree, but does anyone doubt that we share painful experiences? It comes with being human. These experiences shape who we are, but we cannot allow them to dictate who we become. The past is only productive if we learn from our experiences. Once we learn, we must find ways to let go and move forward. Holding on to the past only disables us from being anything other than what we once were.  The past experiences that we like, we should b...