Diary of a Writer
Author's desk cluttered with her word albums.
WORD BANKS
June 16, 2025
One early evening I jotted down words that I liked. On my lap sat a cute, themed journal swathed with pink and bold flowers. I opened a fresh page. At the top, in a lime green Papermate Flair pen, I wrote, Nouns and Verbs, and more.
I watched a documentary, and while writing with a Sharpie S-Gel .07 pen I scribbled down some words I liked. No matter what words I see, let's say, written on a detergent package, or hear, they may make it into my journals, I'll talk about this more later in a different post; the words I focus on are mainly nouns and verbs, which is helpful since many words are both, along with being an adjective. When I add the suffix -ly, often I have an adverb, and the suffix -ness can give me a noun. The English language is incredible once you break it down into its parts.
You see those journals to your left. They're mine. I have more of them, too.
Screech. "McCarthy. Stop the car!"
I get it. I'm busy too.
"What the heck," you continue to rant at me. "You're telling me to write down words that I come across and like. I don't have the time for that."
Yes, I'm telling you. You should make the time.. Start small, like a little notebook. Once this habit sticks, you'll never turn back. Unlike reading the dictionary, my stash of words started like this: I stumbled upon a word and snagged it for my journal because I loved its sound, number of parts, or conjuring ability. All my chosen words specially link to my themes. A regular dictionary can't do that.
When I taught third graders to write, I offered them a lot of options for their writing utensils: plain pencils, colored pencils, pens, and even crayons. I always provided cool looking journals to write in, too. One was a Japanese theme where besides their writing there were special places inside. On those pages they glued their homemade paper origami animals. Another one was Colonial American theme where the cover of the journal wrapped in a homemade quilted fabric.
I passed out their new journals, and knew by their smiles this was a good starting point for their writing. For many of these early writers, anything that helped them write, whether it be the special pencil they used or the cool-looking journal to write in. Those things mattered. These principles apply to any students of writing. Whatever gets my attention and creative juices flowing, I use it.
So, this is fun, right. Neat journals. Flashy writing utensils. I even had a creative boy that took apart a paperclip and stuck one end into his pencil eraser. When he wrote, the twisted metal wiggled. The entire class followed suit. I just shrugged. Whatever gets them to write and they did.
Besides that special pen and paper, my students had a notebook for their words. I called it their Word Bank. They thought that was pretty cool, too. Word bank, wow. During a teaching unit, for example history, I gave them time to store the vocabulary words in their notebook. I prompted them to refer to their bank of words when they wrote their stories. I do the same thing as an adult writer, but not as organized. I shake my head that I'm not real organized like my students. I have a lot of word banks.
My brain never ignores the interconnection that aligns between writing and words.. Why would I spend all the time writing down words I like? Or record nouns and verbs during my research. Or when I hear a great word in a song. And while I search for 12th and 13th century words for my medieval inspired young adult stories.
My experience alerts me repeatedly. I never suffer from a slowdown or mental drain if I have my list of words.