Wednesday, May 7, 2014

From Left to Write: Sparkle Words Shine in Ruby


"Use your Sparkle Words!"

Flashing back to my son's first grade classroom, I easily hear his teacher rallying her students to include descriptive adjectives into their writing.  As they were six years old, those words often consisted of a favorite color from an eight pack box of Crayolas;  or the words a lot, very, manygreat, or cool.  As simplistic as those words are, even several years later, I still think of those or any descriptions as Sparkle Words.

Clearly, those lettered images grow as kidlets' vocabularies increase.  And by the time words are whipped into published story, hopefully those stitched together letters and phrases paint pictures for readers to see into the writer's world.

Cynthia Bond transports her reader, creating magic with her Sparkle Words, in her debut novel, Ruby.  The imagery her words paint firmly embeds a reader into time, place, sight, sound, and smell.

My eyes sucked in the opening of Bond's tale, telling of a mad woman, but it was only the second paragraph that grabbed and pasted me stuck like a winged creature on a permanent fly paper pit stop.  Bond uses her version of Sparkle Words to tell us of Ruby Bell.

Eyes read those words, just as I was taught at three, moving from left to right across the page.  But, once was not enough.  And I still did not have enough, even reading it five, six, seven times.  Due to its subject matter, the book is not one my kidlets are ready for, but I knew those words in the second paragraph - the ones that would not let me go - are the perfect sample of where I hope they learn to grow their own versions of Sparkle Words, so I read it to them.  And even still, it was not enough.

It took me at least a day before I was able to move beyond just the second grouping of sentences.  And the very last set of words from that second grouping held so tightly to my breath, I fell asleep several nights watching them parade across my closed eyelids.

Fortunately, Bond continued to share her rich and layered imagery for my eyes to greedily suck in the hundreds more paragraphs in her tale.

I hope your world is adorned with Sparkle Words - words you hear, words you read, words you write, words you speak.


This post was inspired by the novel, Ruby, by Cynthia Bond, a gripping story about overcoming our past and embracing love in a racially charged rural 1950s Texas.  Join From Left to Write on May 8th, as we discuss Ruby.  As a member, I received a copy of the book for review purposes.



8 comments:

  1. Thank you for sharing what a beautiful novel this was. I hope others read it half as intently as you did.

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    1. My youngest and I were just talking about her prose, bringing her dad into the conversation. It didn't take long before I was reading that second paragraph aloud to my husband and she grabbed the book and asked me to show her where the cake baking paragraph is...another one I read the kids. (page 6) Sweet girl then read that aloud to her dad like the poetry it is.

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  2. That's what I enjoy so much about our book club, that other members can read things that I don't see. I grabbed my book again and read that 2nd paragraph and oh my goodness! It's better than poetry. And I didn't catch that when I began the book. You are a master of sparkle words! Bravo!

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    1. I'm so glad you went back and read that! I didn't quote it in the post in the hopes that someone would read it in the book where it holds more weight. I simply love it!

      And thank you for your kind words, Alicia!

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  3. Thanks for sharing this posts. I love how excellent writers can weave words to create something beautiful. That is definitely a gift. I love the term Sparkle Words.

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    1. She definitely wove a beautiful tapestry in Ruby! :>

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  4. Yes! While the prose was difficult, it is what made the story so impactful, and it think you can see that in all of our posts!

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    1. Reading through it slowly and repeatedly allowed me to savor her writing. I'm hoping to see her continue to publish.

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