The right word makes all the difference.

I am an ordinary writer. My writings are not literary. Every so often I can turn a dynamic phrase, but it takes real effort. My writings are more conversational, folksy, elementary. My husband, on the other hand, is an artist with words. He can paint a blank sheet of paper with a broad spectrum of verbal colors--vivid and in odd combinations that make me sigh and think why, oh why, can't I think of phrases like that?

Perhaps it is knowlege of vocabulary and the power of words that make his writing more literary, while my efforts remain on the everyday plane. As a college student, Calvin read and studied Word Power. He is a whiz at the entomology of words. He loves to read the dictionary for heaven's sake. His user vocabulary is larger than mine.

This is a condition, a weakness I've long recongnized in my writings. I have a large understanding vocabulary, but a smaller user vocabulary. Sure, I know what many, many words mean when I see them...I just never think of them when I'm writing. Perhaps I need to read the Word Power, but then, perhaps I do have "word power"--in my own way.