Writing Tool: 5-minute Dictionary Trick

Pick a word, any word...  

I've got another writing tool from the unflappable James Scott Bell.  The 5-minute dictionary trick.  The gist is simple.

1. Open up the dictionary to a random work
2. Write about that word for five minutes
3. Look over what you've written
4. Underline anything that surprises you
5. Now write five minutes on that

Here is an example, edited slightly for comprehension

Random word = prod

    He prodded her.  He prodded her good.  Plied her for a confession.  She stood firm.  No prod was good enough for her.  No prod was God to her.  She was her own woman.  An a prod from God was the only thing that was getting anything out of her.

    A prod is a type of stick in the old world.  Not the old world that we think of, per say, or by chance.  Rather, a Prod of the umlaut variety, imbued with mystic powers.  Knotted, gnarly, and winnowed with the oaks of yesterday and the beech of the heroes of old.

    Prod.  Say it five times fast.  Prod.  Prod.  Prod.  Prod.  Prod.  Looses it’s meaning, doesn’t it?  Yeah of course you’d say that, you linguistic agnostic.  Talk of the town, aren’t you?  Making it all up as you go along?  No prod is every good enough for you, four words and all.

    A prod was all I needed to get this dictionary trick going.  What has it been, months in the back burner?  Just like the prod to get me to a new house and a prod to keep my creative achievements alive.  And lurking behind it all, the relentless prodding and cajoling, the carrot and the stick of my writing career.  Oh, how barrowed has it all been?  Across the years, fighting for the right to call myself an author.  Fighting for the clarity and wit to have a book worth writing, one worth reading.  Will it be for naught?  No.  I’ll prod my quivering will time and time again until the path is beaten to the door of my first published book.  Then, the road beckons ever onward.

Underlined words:  Knotted, gnarly, and winnowed with the oaks of yesterday and the beech of the heroes of old.

• There comes a time when metaphor fails.  When the past is merely the past and the future is yet a box to be opened.  Who knows the words to put down that bring to eternal life, immortal fame?  No too, is the immortal frame a picture to be pittanced at. 
• Enough.  The oaks of yesterday are the structures and traditions that are tall and strong, yet inexplicably gnarled.  Not straight as perfection or idealization would have it but curved with the curveballs of the world.  Real, honest, all the rest.
• The beech tree, a tree I know little of, yet good for some things of crafting wood.  Taking the past and making something new out of it, bringing it into the unbearable present.  As it were.  Just like we can take a tree and fashion something new to deal with our journey from now to the future (a rippling river with deep currents and lurking serpents), we can and must break up the wisdom of the past, the stories of the heroes, and make something new.  For the past is always by necessity, out of date.  Not so say useless, far from it.  But needing to be given an update with the knowledge and the struggles of the present moment.  All will come clear in time.