Here’s what I do for weird fun and lexical exercise: I take lists of words I don’t know and weave them into stories, defining the words in context as I go. I’m flexing two creative muscles here, one that develops story and one that exploits language. I use this challenge and ones like it to shed clarity on my creative process, which, at its heart, is a strategy of setting a goal and then acting on it. In everything I write, I set goals – I frame the exercise – then I act, and that’s how I get things done. Pretty simple. It’s effective. It’s made more effective through exercise, and that’s why I bother to spend the time turning this – after-wise, babblement, cycopede, daggle-tail – into this:

“After-wise, when I had a chance to reflect on it, I realized it was all babblement from the start, her way to confuse and betray me. In all the cycopede of human knowledge there is no word vile enough to demean that daggle-tail minx.”

And that’s why I invite you to, too. I’ll give you the words, and you see what fun you can have.

(I’m sure you can think of a thousand reasons not to try this game, everything from it’s dumb to I might fail. For now let’s say that none of those apply. Just have some fun.)

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