One of our great novelists Jack London used to keep a dictionary on hand and learn two new words a day. I know from sorting through countless old books that there used to be many school text books whose sole purpose was to build your vocabulary.
There are still books like these today:
As well as books available online:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10073
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22457
I hear a lot of talk about Story, Grammar, Writing Schedules, and Plot, but it's not as often I hear writers discussing an active pursuit of adding to their vocabulary. Although we tend to be generous when we learn a great new word—sometimes to the point where all the sudden you see a relatively unused word suddenly appear in more than one new release.
For this week's poll, I'm asking:
I just found some apps for my iPhone for this very purpose! And I've used "word-a-day" e-mail subscriptions and the like. It's a good point... words that aren't used by writers are words that will be lost to the next generation of readers.
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