Ed Ruscha: Paintings of Words

Writing is an art.

In Ed Ruscha's case, Art is writing.



Taken from his web site: "Ruscha has consistently combined the cityscape of his adopted hometown with vernacular language to communicate a particular urban experience."



In some, I love this work because he was creating a particular feeling or image with paintings/words that we as writers create solely with words. The paint is basically a snapshot of what paragraphs of words would look like, combined with a few key words to take your mind in the right direction.



Others seem to be just creative paintings of words, such as the one below:



One of his books, a roughly 600-page compilation of paintings of words is titled:



I love this title. I can't explain it. Perhaps it's the word 'styrene' (an extract from the sap of a styrax tree; it is used in synthetics such as rubber or plastic).



I love that someone could be called Styrene. What would such a person have done to gain a nickname like that? Is it because Styrax trees are very beautiful, and styrene sounds like a feminine name (Eileen, Dorine, etc.), and high concentrations of styrene are carcinogens for humans?

Call it a stretch, but to me it is for these questions that we are writers. Consider this quote by Thomas Berger: "Why do writers write? Because it isn't there."

I know what I'm putting on my Christmas list. This book belongs on my bookshelf.

Everything Wrong with Eragon

It's no secret that I don't like Christopher Paolini.

Therefore, I was thrilled when I came across this list: Everything Wrong With Eragon

This is the list I've been wanting to make for years. Utter love to its maker LordSnow. ThingInTheCoat, you and I may just have to have a polyamorous relationship. ;-)

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Also in cool news, this keyboard is a modern writer's new best friend.



I know there's this stereotype that writers have cats (and why wouldn't you want to?), but really, isn't the keyboard your most faithful companion?

Word Clouds

Today I found an awesome site for us writers.

It's called Wordle and it generates word clouds like this:



The above picture is derived from the entire text of my fifth book, Go Look There, which is a magical realism novel about strange things happening among the children of a particular Southern town.

Here's another, taken from the combined text of all of my favorite poems I've written:




Mostly what I found from this is that I'm a big fan of similes, which I knew, but when the word 'like' was twelve feet tall it really hit home. So I did a Find & Replace command in Microsoft Word (Which you can do by pressing control+F or apple key+f) and replaced 'like' with a space so I could REALLY find out what my most commonly used words are.

Anyway, this was really cool and I'd be eager to see your pictures of what words you use most commonly.