Brain Exercises for Word Nerds

Your friends won't play Scrabble with you. You do the Sunday "NYT's" crossword puzzle in ink. You read the dictionary for fun. Yeah, you're a word nerd.

Exercising the "word part" of your brain contributes to better writing. Here are some exercises to give the word nerd in you a work out.

1. Read books about linguistics. Pick up an abridged copy of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), which provides the history of words. Another good read? "Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable," which provides the stories behind common English fables and folklore. Great beach reads for word nerds.

2. Do crossword puzzles. A fun way to build your vocabulary. If you're an ESL writer who wants to expand your English vocabulary, crossword puzzles come in easy to super-hard. Choose the right level for your English skills and learn what a ewer or an aa is.

3. Play online word games. Yeah, it's a time suck, but when you need a break, there are lots of word games online. One, Word Battle, is a straight up anagram game played tournament style. The other is Just Words, a shorter version of the traditional Scrabble game played head to head - nerd to nerd.

4. Read books by other writers about writing. Ray Bradbury's "Zen and the Art of Writing" is motivational, and you got to admit, the guy could write, so I listen to what he says. Lots of famous writers have written about the craft of crafting words. Info and tips from successful authors make you a better writer.

5. Load your RSS reader with posts from writing blogs. Technorati.com is a search engine for blogs. Do a search for writing blogs, find the bloggers that seem helpful, click on the RSS feed, and your reader will announce new posts by good writers offering good information.

6. Post well-written pieces to discussion boards. See what others have to say about your writing. The members of writers' groups are helpful and willing to provide constructive criticism, so use them as resources. And if you're writing for writers, you'll make it good. Or, someone will tell you it isn't.

7. Write about writing. This is a perfect example. No work today. I'm bored. Wrote this. But all the stuff in this little piece is stuff I've done for years. It works. And if you're a real word nerd, it's not work.

It's fun.