Wendigisms

I’ve decided to keep track of my new favorite author’s metaphors/similes. The man is Chuck Wendig and I’m going to call these Wendigisms. The man is a prodigy when it comes to metaphor and creative use of the English language, the Maestro of Metaphor. I’ll be mining his metaphorical gold nuggets and keeping a list of my favorites. I’ll be mainlining those gold veins like a heroin junkie. That’s right, I’m addicted. I’m sure Chuck, er, the Maestro, could have created a better metaphor there; I am merely the keeper of the archive. He is a writer of many forms, and he pontificates over at Terribleminds. What … are you still here? I’ll wait…

This is by no means a complete list, in fact it barely scratches the mildewed linoleum surface, but I intend to keep adding more. These are posted here with his permission. I welcome your suggestions.

Here they are in no particular order:

• Built like a sagging brick wall, head like a melting lump of Play-Dough 
• art-o-leptic fits of imagination 
• squeeze out word-babies 
• shoved deep into their colonic grotto* 
• slower than a legless caterpillar rolling up a rocky knoll 
• A gift basket of hookers 
• wriggling free from a uterus made from fractal swirls 
• count each pube on your story’s scrotum 
• Spit ‘em out like broken teeth 
• feel like he’s wearing a tuxedo made of bumblebees 
• A hot fresh bucket of words 
• we will now refer to lava as “earthjaculate” 
• kicked in the junk drawer 
• superheroically buoyant 
• epic diaper-breach 
• fleshy 3-D meatbags 
• A burning nugget of possibility tumbling out of the bleak black nowhere 
• high on your own stink, huffing your word-fumes 
• a swirling hate vortex living in the space between your heart and your gut 
• Fatigue nibbles at your marrow like an army of tiny chipmunks 
• ejaculate your DNA into every cell of that story 
• suicide shoes 
• sky the color of a bruised cheek 
• pinnacle of paroxysmic pleasure 
• You need to master Manuscript Lovemaking 7 
• Progress tastes like bacon 
• Embrace the rewrite. From behind. 
• It’s time to blast my six-shooters at the words and make those pesky f***ers dance 
• You pull a mental hammy and s**t your brain-diapers 
• work that was as pleasant as a dildo violation 
• As if writing is a job on par with “unicorn tamer” 
• Other days it feels like you're birthing a lawn chair from your hindquarters 
• create quantum entanglement between your butt and your chair so that you write 
• right in the catcher's mitt known as your "crotch." 
• a thimble full of mouse turds 
• align their chakras and birth their story on a beam of light 
• bleeding imagination juice on the page
• *poop noise*

Wendigisms 2: The

Penmonkey Strikes Back 

I needed a good title for the sequel.  I thought about naming this one Revenge of the Pen Monkey but Chuck already used that title for one of his writing books.  Next was Dead Man’s Prostate, but that’s just a little too gross to publish across the interwebs.  The Quickening doesn’t sound bad, but I’m happy with what I picked. 

These are all giblets of stuff Chuck has published on his website and most are related to the art of writing in some form or fashion.  They’re priceless.  The first page of stuff is here on my 1st Wendigisms page. You can always read more over at Terribleminds.  

And without further ado:

• Feculent turd-heads
• Eff that in the ay, emmer-effer
• I will beat you to death with a sock full of your own teeth
• Mornings tend to be when your brain is at its lemon-scented freshest
• Think of this as a narrative laxative
• Covers that look like someone just ingested a rod of uranium and threw up in a clown’s shoe
• Suddenly your voice is scratchy and dry like you’ve been gargling watch parts and cigarette butts for the last ten years
• Loosen your mind sphincter
• Shock-prod your brain-squirrels into powering the endeavor at hand
• Sad trombone
• Harvest all the delicious Idea Chilli *nom nom nom*
• Plot is like Soylent Green: it’s made of people.
• Sweaty genitals, which is the worst ice cream flavor ever
• Massaging the prostate of your soul
• Your artistic faucet won’t offer anything but a quivering, syphilitic drip
• You are not a sad friendless little tugboat
• It’s about throwing caution into a woodchipper
• coffee so black it might as well have been ink poured out of a squid’s behind.
• scream like a Tasered girl scout
• you were just rolling around in a dish of someone’s fingernail clippings and hoagie sweat
• Extract those wretched little nuggets of hard black hate-coal and use them to fuel the writing
• trees only read magazines about trees. Printed on the flesh of humans
• your jaw hangs loose like a broken porch swing
• Secrete enzymes to build your own authorial exoskeleton
• Ngggh
• we’re all gonna end up under the Grim Reaper’s riding mower
• it’ll slip through one of the many mouse-holes in your mind-floor
• chipping off the tiniest sliver of our intellectual granite
• Shake lose the barnacles you’ve gathered while floating inert in the murky harbor of your undoing.
• I’m allowed to make up new words because I have my Pennsylvania Writer’s License
• jet-lagged and dung-brained
• an autumnal orgy of sweet arctic fruit-sex
• SEIZE THE CARP. No matter how hard that fucking fish wriggles.
• Embrace the Viking immortality of having your ideas live forever.
• a rollicking case of the spiritual pee-shivers
• Cement your genital stamina