Finding the Right Word

and why it feels so good!

Barbara: Let’s talk about the feeling of elation that comes with finding just the right word. All writers must have this experience. You're trying to express something that is not entirely clear to you. It’s in your mind in a cloudy, vague way. You’ve made a stab at it; you’re getting close. You reflect: What exactly did I feel? What did I think? It’s like trying to find the right piece to a puzzle. 

When you find the right word you know it is right. “That’s it!” Your brain was searching for clarity, and you found it.

Elizabeth: William Maxwell, the writer and New Yorker editor, once described finding just the right words as “rapture.” Ramona Grigg captured this feeling perfectly in a recent installment of her excellent substack, WriterEverlasting. Here’s what she wrote:

“Just the other day I re-read a piece I’d written about a month ago and realized ‘inexpensive’ was the wrong word. Horribly wrong. I changed it to ‘ordinary’ and it was as if it came out singing. Perfect! Yes!” 

“Yes!” That’s just what you feel when you nail the word. “Yes!” Finding it is so deeply satisfying. It’s the fun part of editing. Do you think non-writers have occasion to feel this so vividly? 

Barbara: Well, it happens in therapy, too. As an example, after several sessions discussing her marital breakup, one patient told me about finding the perfect word to describe how she felt, in a self-help book…. She felt “discarded” by her husband. The word clarified for her the pain and anger she felt, and it clarified for me the nature of her feelings. 

Elizabeth: ‘Discarded’ is different from ‘rejected,’ isn’t it? It implies used and then thrown away, reduced to trash. Someone might reject you for a multitude of reasons, even for reasons that reflect badly on them. “Discarded” is more demeaning, more insulting, dehumanizing. 

It’s amazing how powerful it can be to find the right word. As you clarify your thoughts, you discover more about yourself, about how you feel and what you believe. This is a perfect example of how writing and therapy overlap. And, of course, words are the essential tools of both endeavors.

Barbara: Thinking about this makes me aware of how much time I spend helping patients find the right words during psychotherapy. The patient is trying to convey what they feel or what happened. And I’m trying to deeply understand their experience and what it meant to them. So we go back and forth. I try to repeat what I understood them to be saying; then they pick up the nuanced ways in which my understanding is off. And eventually we get to, “Yes, exactly!” The person feels understood. This process of self discovery and expression, is similar to the one that goes on in the mind of a writer.  

Elizabeth: Of course, crossword hobbyists are also in search of words to solve puzzles, but their puzzles arrive from outside, not from within. And once their search is satisfied, that’s it. The crossword puzzle word-search has no personal meaning. 

For writers, on the other hand, the right word brings along with it a realization about why it was the right word, which we recognize because of its associated implications. Around every word is an aura of other related words that connect to it in one way or another and can color the particular word we’re considering. 

It’s possible, for example, that the thing Grigg described was in fact inexpensive, but perhaps ‘ordinary,’ with its associations of ‘banal’ and ‘undistinguished,’ was truer to her feelings about that thing than ‘cut-rate’ or ‘cheap,’ which tag along with ‘inexpensive.’ When ‘ordinary’ clinched what Grigg wanted to convey to the reader, it may also have clarified other feelings for her, such as how she felt about the thing or the character who possessed the thing, etc. (This being Substack, I was able to message Grigg and get her OK for imagining her train of thought. Ramona, weigh in, if you’re reading this!)

Barbara: In cooking, a murky broth is clarified with egg whites, which trap the impurities, until it is crystal clear and you can look through to the bottom. It's lovely to watch something cloudy become completely lucid.

DALL-E 2024

Elizabeth: You might not even realize that your thoughts weren't completely clear, until you try to write them down. It’s a process. Sometimes, even the wrong word helps, because it can signal that you were only skimming the surface and hadn’t quite figured out the entirety or complexity of your message. And overusing the right word also can tip you off. 

For example, when I was writing about the funeral of a longtime friend, a notorious busybody, I noticed I’d used the verb ‘pushed’ five times in recounting what many speakers had said about how he’d gotten them to change. Sorting through the long list of synonyms made me reconsider each individual story more carefully. My friend had persuaded his grandson to take up the cello, badgered a friend to lose weight, nudged a colleague to find the right partner. He’d meddled; he’d hounded; he’d needled. I’d already known what made each verb the right one for each story, but until my word search I hadn’t brought these more detailed observations into consciousness. Adding them created a much more nuanced portrait of my friend’s unusual character.

Barbara: I wonder if you can be a writer without enjoying playing with words…thinking about how similar words differ. No two words are perfectly synonymous. The many connotations, associations, and implications that distinguish one word from another come from myriad sources, largely from the way the initial meaning evolved over time but also from the cultural and personal context in which it’s used now. And words never stop evolving.

Elizabeth: The thesaurus or its online equivalent is a great tool for help in moving from a foggy sense to increasing clarity about what you really think. When I’m groping for what actually happened or the implications of what someone said, I often start with a word that is somewhere in the vicinity of what I think I want to say, and then I try out one synonym after another until I hit on just the right one. Then, I’m off and running.

Barbara: You don’t know exactly what you think about something until you can get it into words, the right words. Isn’t this just what Joan Didion famously said? (Her exact words: “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see, and what it means.”) 

As you write, each word adds to the effort to bring the entire thought or argument into greater focus. And finding that one right word can open a valve that allows the whole thought to flow out.  

Elizabeth: That reminds me of how it used to drive me crazy, when I was a teenager struggling to express an opinion, and my father would say, “If you can’t explain your argument, then you don’t know what you’re saying.” In other words, what you can’t put into words, you don’t really understand. Grrrr. Now I’m impressed to realize how right he was. 

Barbara: Which reminds me of something the biologist Robert Weinberg wrote. I remember it because it seemed paradoxical to me at the time. It went something like this: “I wanted to learn about astronomy, so I offered to teach a course on it.” If you teach a course, you not only have to learn the topic yourself, but — a true test of the depth of your mastery — you also have to put your understanding into words and effectively communicate it to others. You have to find the right words….

By the way, let’s not forget that writing is just one way of communicating one’s thoughts and ideas. In fact, at least half of all the world’s languages do not have a written form. They are simply oral. And all spoken languages have a non-word component. There are “the words” and there is “the music” of language — the tone, the emphasis, the rhythm. Also, there are entirely non-verbal ways to communicate: instrumental music, art, dance, and sign which is a true language in itself … Fundamentally, these are all ways of communicating …to someone else. And when you’re writing, that “someone else” is the reader. 

Elizabeth: But what is behind the pleasure we get from finding the right word? It makes sense that eating is pleasurable, because it’s essential to our survival: sex is essential to the species’ survival. But why should finding the right word feel good? What purpose could it possibly serve?

Barbara: My guess would be that the benefit of “finding the right word” to human survival would be that it allows individuals to connect with others and to receive empathy in return. In addition, the accurate transmission of information and knowledge is crucial for group adaptation and survival. Words connect minds the way the Internet connects computers. Words have made civilization possible. Words are powerful!

So we writers are sitting at our computers, deeply engaged in trying to communicate, in problem-solving, and, every once in a while, when we get the word that clarifies the thought or feeling we’ve been struggling to express, I think we get a “squirt” of dopamine to our reward centers.

Fundamentally, I think human brains have evolved so that when one person  effectively communicates to another person it results in a good feeling. The communication might be very basic (where the berries are good), or something more emotional (a feeling or memory), or even an abstract idea (a plan). One goal of communication is to make coordinated behavior possible. But also, to be understood emotionally is extremely powerful, in and of itself. I believe it is a basic human need in that it is the foundation for trust within a relationship. Transmitting information, connecting with others, being understood, and feeling safe are all dependent on finding the right words.  

Elizabeth: I love that!