A Special Weekend WORDS on WORDS

Ellie Pulikonda

“I write for the pure joy of writing” . . .
Words onWords

Today’s Word: WORDS

Words are the most powerful tool mankind has ever invented, more powerful than any other single invention. Words have enabled us to create civilization as we know it, to discover and name new experiences, and to share their merit and usefulness with others. And words have given us the ability to direct our lives toward our own goals.

Nowhere is this more evident than in writing and publishing our words for others to read. Being a novelist is exciting and rewarding, enabling me to share my thoughts and discoveries about the human condition with others. After all, being an author is simply choosing, writing, and publishing words that communicate to others what the authors has found to be true in her own experience.

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So it is with the novel I’m currently writing, which carries the brief title of “Willa.”
Willa was not a name to be worn lightly. The question that informs her story is: did the name (the word) create the person or was the naming a kind of foresight of the person that she was born to be.

Notice that I did not say “the generous woman she was”. She gave grudgingly to those who found her favor but not many who walked with her through some part of her life gained even that slight reward. Nor did I say she was a beloved woman or one who loved well. She had her favorites, oh, yes she did, and they warmed themselves, sometimes briefly, in her regard for them. But there were also those who served her wearily with no real expectation of any kind word or warm regard, although surely they hoped that at some time they would be rewarded for their steadfast service.

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She was, nonetheless, a remarkable woman, her coming of age occurring during the heady days of the suffragist movement. Determined to live on her own terms when most women didn’t dare dream of such freedom, she seems to have ignored the proposition that others should have shared equally in that privilege. It was a life she claimed only for herself.

“Willa” is the tale of this remarkable woman’s journey through life. It raises more questions than it answers but questions have a way of changing our understanding even as, or because, they provoke us.