Hello. My name is Susan and I have a confession to make: I am a Wordaholic. Perhaps you are, too?
By Susan Creamer Joy - Sunday 20 Nov 2011
Hello. My name is Susan, and I have a confession to make: I am a Wordaholic.
I really don’t know how it happened. One word at a time, I guess. It’s not like I planned it this way. I mean, as a kid, I didn’t say to myself “I want to be a wordaholic when I grow up.” But now my life is a mess, littered with split infinitives and dangling participles, raw vowel sounds and harsh invectives secretly stashed behind every burgeoning idea.
I want to stop, but I can’t.
For years I had it under control; or so I thought. I could write in my journal for a brief spell, then walk a way without thinking much more about it. Over time, however, I saw myself slipping into obscurity and after a long life of manageable, moderately recorded, verbal sobriety, I began to feel invisible. Even to myself.
Oh, I had my family, my dogs, my artwork; but they were not enough.
Nothing was ever enough.
So, when I reached the point when my bouts of dissatisfaction came with more frequency and with heightened levels of despair, I began hitting the words with much more regularity. In fact, I couldn’t go a day without hitting them and it was not long before they were all I thought about.
Suddenly, I found myself trolling the internet in search of linguistic content and literary sustenance in which to drown my repressed articulations – in the middle of the afternoon!
I am so ashamed.
But I couldn’t help myself.
I feel such guilt every time I think about the many journals I have hidden underneath my bed; their pages stuffed with adjectives, verbs and countless run-on sentences. I don’t use them much, but I need to know they are there just in case I need a fix in the middle of the night.
For a long time I kept everything on a manageable frequency and very few people were even aware I had a problem. I was able to remain in my studio each day and work on my paintings, drawings or mixed media pieces for hours before the compulsion to write drew my attention to my journal or my laptop by early evening.
However, all that changed after it was suggested by some other closet writers that I should write online and they directed me to several sites that cater to this unnatural obsession. It was our dirty little secret.
That was when everything first began to fall apart, the beginning of the end, and in a very short time I realized I had a serious addiction that I could not conquer through willpower alone.
It wasn’t long after initiating my first few posts in this new world of the blogosphere that I began thinking only about what I was going to write next. Of course, I’d then slave for an unconscionable length of time in rapt effort carving, culling, expurgating, crafting and parsing every word I wrote; often spending upwards of ten or twelve hours on just one article!
I’ve already taken much criticism from my husband who has become suspicious of my chronically distracted state. He notices the frequency with which I tiptoe off to another room to feverishly indulge the internal dialogue that falls from my mind and onto the screen of my trusty laptop.
How many times in the past couple of months has he casually walked into my studio where I am surrounded by just-begun paintings, half-done illustrations and a work table littered with dry paints, brushes and unused ephemera, to catch me hunched over my drawing table in a deep linguistic trance, frantically thumbing my way toward just the right word through my wretchedly overused thesaurus?
Of course, my reaction to the intrusion into my word-funded revelry is immediate denial, and I nervously slam closed my laptop. When queried as to my actions, I reply only that I was checking my email or tracking an order on Amazon.
Is it genetic? Possibly. My father was an English major at Dartmouth, and my mother has an elegant fluency with language that is obviously above par. But as far as I am aware, no one in my immediate family struggles with the same excessive preoccupation and chronic dependency.
I am the sole possessor of this unfortunate depravity that has taken over my life, and for what? All for the sake of WORDS!
Can I stop? Do I want to?
The answer to both is a resounding no! Particularly since I have discovered that I am not alone – that on the internet there are hundreds of thousands, of other blessedly obsessed wordaholics who have succumbed to their addiction and are willing to support one another through the blissful and sometimes torturous process of exorcising their demons of thought into concise and inspiring verbiage.
Is there a Salvation Army for the terminally verbose? A Wordaholics Verboseonymous? I pray not. I’d rather belly up to the literary bar and die a failed, stinkin' wordsmith than live a sober, mute success.
Now my next question is, “What are you doing here?”
Cheers!
I really don’t know how it happened. One word at a time, I guess. It’s not like I planned it this way. I mean, as a kid, I didn’t say to myself “I want to be a wordaholic when I grow up.” But now my life is a mess, littered with split infinitives and dangling participles, raw vowel sounds and harsh invectives secretly stashed behind every burgeoning idea.
I want to stop, but I can’t.
For years I had it under control; or so I thought. I could write in my journal for a brief spell, then walk a way without thinking much more about it. Over time, however, I saw myself slipping into obscurity and after a long life of manageable, moderately recorded, verbal sobriety, I began to feel invisible. Even to myself.
Oh, I had my family, my dogs, my artwork; but they were not enough.
Nothing was ever enough.
So, when I reached the point when my bouts of dissatisfaction came with more frequency and with heightened levels of despair, I began hitting the words with much more regularity. In fact, I couldn’t go a day without hitting them and it was not long before they were all I thought about.
Suddenly, I found myself trolling the internet in search of linguistic content and literary sustenance in which to drown my repressed articulations – in the middle of the afternoon!
I am so ashamed.
But I couldn’t help myself.
I feel such guilt every time I think about the many journals I have hidden underneath my bed; their pages stuffed with adjectives, verbs and countless run-on sentences. I don’t use them much, but I need to know they are there just in case I need a fix in the middle of the night.
For a long time I kept everything on a manageable frequency and very few people were even aware I had a problem. I was able to remain in my studio each day and work on my paintings, drawings or mixed media pieces for hours before the compulsion to write drew my attention to my journal or my laptop by early evening.
However, all that changed after it was suggested by some other closet writers that I should write online and they directed me to several sites that cater to this unnatural obsession. It was our dirty little secret.
That was when everything first began to fall apart, the beginning of the end, and in a very short time I realized I had a serious addiction that I could not conquer through willpower alone.
It wasn’t long after initiating my first few posts in this new world of the blogosphere that I began thinking only about what I was going to write next. Of course, I’d then slave for an unconscionable length of time in rapt effort carving, culling, expurgating, crafting and parsing every word I wrote; often spending upwards of ten or twelve hours on just one article!
I’ve already taken much criticism from my husband who has become suspicious of my chronically distracted state. He notices the frequency with which I tiptoe off to another room to feverishly indulge the internal dialogue that falls from my mind and onto the screen of my trusty laptop.
How many times in the past couple of months has he casually walked into my studio where I am surrounded by just-begun paintings, half-done illustrations and a work table littered with dry paints, brushes and unused ephemera, to catch me hunched over my drawing table in a deep linguistic trance, frantically thumbing my way toward just the right word through my wretchedly overused thesaurus?
Of course, my reaction to the intrusion into my word-funded revelry is immediate denial, and I nervously slam closed my laptop. When queried as to my actions, I reply only that I was checking my email or tracking an order on Amazon.
Is it genetic? Possibly. My father was an English major at Dartmouth, and my mother has an elegant fluency with language that is obviously above par. But as far as I am aware, no one in my immediate family struggles with the same excessive preoccupation and chronic dependency.
I am the sole possessor of this unfortunate depravity that has taken over my life, and for what? All for the sake of WORDS!
Can I stop? Do I want to?
The answer to both is a resounding no! Particularly since I have discovered that I am not alone – that on the internet there are hundreds of thousands, of other blessedly obsessed wordaholics who have succumbed to their addiction and are willing to support one another through the blissful and sometimes torturous process of exorcising their demons of thought into concise and inspiring verbiage.
Is there a Salvation Army for the terminally verbose? A Wordaholics Verboseonymous? I pray not. I’d rather belly up to the literary bar and die a failed, stinkin' wordsmith than live a sober, mute success.
Now my next question is, “What are you doing here?”
Cheers!