Thursday, April 8, 2010

"Boughten"

It's not Friday, and this isn't my typical creative short story Free Write. I decided that I could channel my creativity in writing by sharing everyday occurrences in my life. After all, truth is stranger than fiction, right?

Well, yesterday wasn't strange, but as a writer, you tend to remember instances where your English skills are called into question. My excuse is that writers think well while writing, but not in the spoken word. When your fingers are furiously tapping away at a keyboard or your hand is cramped from scribbling your thoughts on paper, you still have time to think. There's no way of telling whether I spent five minutes on this post or five hours. To the reader, it is continuous. However, in conversation, if I were to pause for even ten seconds to selectively choose my words and make sure I said what I wanted, people would think I was dropped a couple of times when I was young.

Ok. Enough foreplay. By now I'm sure you're wondering what the heck I'm talking about. Yesterday I used the word "boughten" in a conversation. Would I ever use that word while writing? Of course not! I know it's not a grammatically correct word. But, as I explained maybe a little bit too much above, writers don't think so well on their feet. Why else do we have spell check, grammar check and such? (By the way, in this post I spelled channel, occurrences, continuous and grammar wrong before using the spell check function to correct my mistakes. See what I mean?)

No comments: