Remember Tippex? That saver of misspellings – and also the chief source of gunky pens, when it hadn’t quite dried and you started writing over the top.
Someone small was describing it to me yesterday – only they called it mistake glue. They told me that that the mistake glue gathers up all the wrong words and then they all get washed down to the SEWERS! (Big emphasis on that part, of course.)
It made me think about how much writing is about overhearing wonderful turns of phrase – and nicking them. Covertly. Sometimes more obviously asking ‘Can I use that?’ But enjoying a new set of words or phrases that just turned up.
I read a couple of obituaries for Nora Ephron fairly recently – screen writer of When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle and more. There was evidently a phrase in her house that ‘life is copy’. And it’s true – life often throws up enough great lines that sometimes, all you have to do is reach out and grab them as they go past.
I tend to think of them in terms of blog post titles. Children’s books. I am also guilty of life as copy on Facebook – or more, walking away from work or somewhere else, reformulating an incident in my head, in language that will work on Facebook.
So are we all narcissists, as the Guardian is claiming today? Or are the best jokes on Facebook, and that’s why we’re there? (The best jokes are in fact by kids, but their parents kindly transcribe them onto Facebook.)
I love the fact that, for all of writers (and wannabee writers) searching for words, and toiling over their laptops, there are people just wandering around, living life, and minting fresh phrases as they do so.
Words can signal a different take on life. A different way of looking at things. Or a collection of sounds that strike off new chords in us, because of the other words they remind us of. All you have to do is tune in.