Do These 3 Things To Add New Words To Your Vocabulary Every day
“I’m struggling to write more, maybe my vocabulary isn’t enough to become a prolific writer!!!”
Lately, a writer in my Facebook profile told me during a candid conversation that he is struggling to write more than 1000 words per day. He thinks he lacks the vocabulary to write more. Like me, he isn’t a native writer.
But he’s wrong. I wish I could say it to him, I didn’t want to offend him.
You become a prolific writer when you write every BS idea that you devised while peeing, eating, running away from dogs, while going through severe trauma, or even when you are asleep ( dreams often give new ideas to write our next blog post).
In short, writing is all about ideas.
You need an idea to write, not words. When you have something noteworthy to share, you’ll find the right words to elaborate it to your readers. With Google, it’s not difficult to find synonyms and appropriate words to describe something.
However, if you have a huge vocabulary, you reap numerous benefits. One of them is, of course, you don’t have to look for words to describe your emotions, paint pictures of a scene, and your word choice eventually becomes better.
In a nutshell, having a substantial vocabulary saves you time when you are writing. Being a non-native writer myself, I followed these three rituals on daily bases to keep adding new words to expand my writing arsenal.
Read Daily
Reading is my hobby — my only hobby. I like to stay shut in my room even during the holidays because I have companions inside my room — my books!
I have never been alone. My collection of books never let me feel bored. I even procrastinate by reading. But is reading enough to expand vocabulary?
The answer is no!
Alongside reading, you should mark every single word that you don’t know.
Don’t look for the meanings online while reading a book, it disrupts the flow. Just keep a highlighter in your hands and highlight the unknown words while reading. Read at least 50 pages daily.
If you are not a book guy, you can resort to reading articles on New York Times, CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, Huffington Post, Buzz Feed, Washington Post, etc.
My morning ritual is reading 5–10 articles daily. And in these articles, I find at least 1–2 new words in each. Keep Notepad or MS Word file open and copy-paste the new words in it. Remember to hit Ctrl+S every time you add a new word in this file.
And that brings us to our next step.
Write Difficult Words In A Journal
And once you have highlighted/collected all the new words you read, write them in a separate journal. I have been doing this for 2 years. And today, I have four of such journals with 5000+ words in them.
If you think this part is useless, you need to understand the science of active revision.
The more frequently we revise something, the better we remember it.
You can’t revise marked words by taking out books from your already crammed bookshelf. And there is no way I recommend doing this on your laptop, with so much distraction around.
There is a reason why I write them in a journal.
Revise In Solitude
And once you have jotted down all the difficult words in a separate journal, you can carry this journal anywhere with you. Be it a park, library, office, etc.
I normally keep these journals with my books. So when I get time, on weekends or before going to bed, I revise the unknown words I had marked while reading something 2 years ago.
No matter if those words are common or not, if I come across such words while consuming content from native magazine and e-paper or not, I know them.
Not because I want to show off but, because I feel empowered. I know I can share my thoughts with clarity if I use the appropriate words. I can think better. I can communicate better. So I have many reasons to work on my vocabulary.
Takeaway
As a writer, content consumption becomes a ritual for you — especially in the form of reading. But when you are not a native, you are likely to come across a dozen new words daily. And it pisses you off when you don’t know their meaning. So the way forward is simple now, adopt these three habits to keep adding new words to your writing arsenal!
