Time for Fun

Today’s blog will be short. It’s a beautiful day and I want to go outside and enjoy.

On the subject of having fun, there’s a game I’ve been wanting to share with you. It’s the Reader’s Digest Word Power Game. Before a writing session I often use it as a warm up device. It’s an enjoyable pastime and also a tool to improve vocabulary. There are four parts. The first section is multiple choice questions. They give you one word and you have to select the best definition out of four options. The next portion involves unscrambling words. It’s sort of like playing hangman only they provide a definition. There's a nerve wracking timer ticking in the background. I don't seem to hear the timer while doing the other sections, but I always do during the unscrambling component of the game. It’s the most challenging part. Next comes a matching exercise. They give you four words and four definitions and have you determine which belong together. The final part gives you six words, three pairs of synonyms. You have to put the corresponding words together. They give you a score at the end. Try it sometime. The link is: http://www.rd.com/international/asen/wordpower/WordPower.swf

A second thing I want to tell you about is a writing book I’ve been reading. It’s Novelist’s Boot Camp 101 Ways to Take Your Book From Boring to Bestseller by Todd A. Stone. The book relates the process of writing a novel to military strategizing. The analogy works well as a structure to organize the book and also makes dry subject matter entertaining. Stone starts with the initial creative process and takes you all the way through to final editing. I checked him out on line and found he offers Novelist’s Boot Camp Workshops. If he does one in Denver I plan to attend.

"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing." George Bernard Shaw