Synonyms for a Special Day

 

When I joined the More Than Writers blogging team I was allocated the date of the 25^th of each month. I knew then that every year I would be posting a blog on two very important days. One of those, of course, is Christmas Day. That is a challenge in itself, but also a real joy. Posting something short and meaningful that may not be seen by many, but encourages those who do read it. The other important 25^th of the month is this one. April 25^th 1992 was the day I married my best friend. And 31 years later we are still best friends – and still married! God is faithful!

As I came to write this blog I was struggling to find a link between my Wedding Anniversary and writing. And I did an anniversary themed blog this time last year. I nearly gave up and went to look elsewhere for inspiration  But then I hit on an idea, maybe a little bit of a daft one - hopefully it will end well…

 I am in the process of having a recently finished manuscript professionally edited. I am also editing and re-editing it myself. Those of you that have been there know how tedious and frustrating that can be. Those words that flowed out of you, that seemed to sing with their brilliance, now scowl back at you and say ‘why did you put me here?’, ‘you should have used a better word’, or ‘you have used me 50 times already in the last three chapters’!

It may be a bit of an exaggeration, but herein lies a problem of mine. I do use the same words over and over again. I even use the same phrases. When you are writing a book over many months, taking breaks and coming back to it, you do not realise how much you repeat yourself. Until you read the manuscript as a whole – or your editor does! Now I pride myself on having a reasonably good vocabulary, but how often when I am writing can I just not think of a better way of saying things. Those beautiful lyrical words I should be using are frustratingly illusive and I fall back on the tried and tested ordinary ones.

Now I am editing, I find myself picking up on these oft repeated words and if I need inspiration, using tools to suggest alternatives. Such as the  ‘Synonyms’ or ‘Thesaurus’ features built into Word. Or the wonderful thesaurus.com. (I do have a real Thesaurus somewhere upstairs, but it is currently at the bottom of a box of books)

So I thought for an experiment, I would take the very ordinary words ‘Wedding’ and ‘Anniversary’, and feed them into my thesaurus tools and see what happened. Here are the results (some of them!)

Wedding  : marriage, nuptials, wedding ceremony, wedding party, marrying, uniting, join in matrimony, joining, linking, merging, fusing, yoking, allying, espousing, tie the knot, get hitched, walk down the aisle, say ‘I do’

Anniversary :  birthday, centenary, bicentenary,  commemoration, jubilee, festival, holiday, red-letter day, recurrence

Hurrah! Today is our Yoking birthday!

Varying the words we use can obviously add depth and vibrancy to our writing. It is not a bad thing to spot the words we overuse and try and find better ones. Or just to come up with different ways of saying things. But maybe for today I won’t be wishing my husband an Espousing Jubilee.

And as for this blog, perhaps I should leave it here and concentrate my energies for the rest of the day on our Saying ‘I do’ commemoration.

Joy Margetts writes Christian Historical Fiction. Her debut novel 'The Healing' was published in March 2021, and her second ‘The Pilgrim’ in July 2022. She makes her home in beautiful North Wales and takes her inspiration from its rich spiritual history and stunning landscapes. She is also wife, mother and grandmother and a lover of the Word of God. Her personal blog and more information about her books can be found here www.joymargetts.com