Be a Collector

Writers are magpies, finding shiny jewels and taking them back to our own nests. Or, if you hate magpies like everyone in the world but me, writers are collectors of strange words, odd trivia, beautiful moments, bits of dialogue.

I collect gruesome deaths. So far I have two:

Stuck in a hollow log. Log is sawed in half. Not a magic trick.

Hot poker up the rear burns out innards. Wife did it.

The former I heard in a church sermon. Unfortunately I didn't catch who it was that died that way. The latter is from history, and a friend shared it with me. Some king died that way. (I wish I knew more details about the first one. Was the log sawed across, or length-wise?)

If you don't want to write about gruesome deaths, you don't have to collect them. If you do, feel free to collect the two above. One of the most important things to collect, though, is words. Everyone should collect words, especially writers. Here's a few I've collected:

Prolix

Clarion

Lucubrations

Anathema

Eldritch

Hist

Asperity

I'll leave it to you to look them up. Collect striking Bible verses: (Job 5:7 "Yet man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upwards.") Collect vivid phrases - "a garden of lights in the sky." Collect magical objects, random facts, funny anecdotes. Be a collector.