Wednesday, April 11, 2007

...and I owe it all to romance novels...

Ever played Bookworm? It's a computer game that you can either buy or play online, and the object of it is pretty simple. Build words out of the Scrabble-type tiles for points--the longer the word, the better your points. If you do enough lame words, you get burning tiles that start eating your good tiles. If they reach the bottom, GAME OVER.

Bookworm is one of my happy little addictions, partly because I can play it at work or at home, and partly because it's the ideal game for the writer in me--I get to make words! Big words, small words, and everything in between! And the coolest part is, I'm pretty good at it.

Why? Romance novels.

You see, being an avid reader of the stuff, I come across words that the rest of the populace doesn't on a daily basis. Like dowdy. Quirt. Jape. Phaeton. Apoplexy.

Do you have any idea how many points I can get with words like apoplexy? It staggers the imagination. And if I didn't read romances, I wouldn't come across odd little words like that, and I'd be stuck making boring words like steam, house, rake and apple. Snore.

Who'd have thought it? Romance novels as vocabulary builders! All hail romance!

1 Comment:

Spy Scribbler said...

One of my latest resolutions is to play more games. I love Book Worm! Have you tried Text Twister? I also like Typer Shark. They're both at Yahoo Games.