Friday 13 January 2012

"Just Get It Done"…


This is a phrase I hear so often in my life. It could be my father, in relation to some chore akin to the room tidying of yesteryear, bellowing “just get it done” along the hall. It could be my internal monologue telling me to stop procrastinating and get on with a tricky chapter.

But the other day I heard a comment from my boss to rival them all. His tirade began (not directed at me I hasten to add) along the lines of our colleagues’ work not being mystical or in any way difficult blah blah and ended like “I don’t understand why it has to be so difficult, just get it done!”

Hearing it from his mouth in a professional environment gave me a little epiphany about how versatile our language is and how with just a few changes of resonance, tone, volume and circumstance we can give few words a multitude of meanings scaling from playful to downright angered.

This is a concept I’m taking into my novel writing. One of my characters already has a phrase he likes to use frequently and now I may just use the phrase to give it a twist on the meaning during some difficult event in his story. Ease of adaptation for expression is possibly the biggest strength of our language.

Elloise Hopkins.

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