Sometimes I’m shocked by how little I know about language. Hell of a thing for a professional writer to admit, but there it is. A lot of us never got taught this stuff.
I’ve recently been dipping into Stephen Fry’s poetry writing manual The Ode Less Travelled. One of the things Fry talks about is the rhythm of words, the way we stress or don’t stress different syllables, how that makes language sound and feel. Once it’s pointed out, this can seem kind of obvious, but it’s the sort of obvious that you need pointing out.
Before Fry’s book, I didn’t have a mental framework to think about this issue of rhythm, never mind the language to discuss it or the tools to use it effectively. And with decades of bad habits behind me, it’s hard to make thinking about that rhythm part of how I write. But it’s also useful and valuable, a way to make my words more effective.
I’m not saying this is the sort of thing that we should teach every kid. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. The curriculum’s pretty crowded. But I wish I hadn’t waited until a couple of years ago to start learning about it. And it wasn’t until I started learning that I could think to have that wish.