Stephen King's article Everything You Need to Know about Writing Successfully in Ten Minutes is a great read. Full of excellent advice.But I wanted to remove two sentences. Stephen said: Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule. While I agree with the intent, I think there is room for an exception. It depends what you want to do with the word.
I love my thesaurus. But I don't look up words to add them 'plug and play' into my manuscript. I look them up to find their friends and companions, the other words I can roll around my brain to take me there and expand my senses. I want to hear, touch, feel, sniff and taste my word. But to do that I need depths and gradations that don't immedately come to mind.For me, a theasurus is inspirational. It also encourages me to draw my imagery outside the square. I look my word up and step a little to the left or right.
And with that in mind, this Friday's website is The Bookshelf Muse who does wonderful Thesaurus posts where she explores a word in all it's multi-dimensional glory. Here is one of my favourites Setting Thesaurus Entry: Waterfall.
Although... I wouldn't mind being able to write like Stepehen King. If I could do that in the first place, I probably wouldn't need a thesaurus.
