What are your strengths as a writer?

Colleen has tagged me to come up with something positive ... my five strengths as a writer. Here's what Colleen wrote about herself as a writer.

I hope I can come up with some answers to this question! Although you can't see it, there are very long pauses between each of these sentences as I sit and think ... and think ... and ponder ... and consider. It isn't easy to dig into one's psyche and say nice things about oneself. (LOL ... how pompous is THAT sentence?) Okay, I can think of ONE thing; now if I can just do it one ... by one ... by one until I reach five.

1. First would have to be my lifelong fascination with words. A wordsmith has to be very comfortable with words. When I discovered philosophy is all about WORDS, I majored in philosophy for my first degree ... and I loved it! Along the way I added another major, getting the second part of my double-major in English Language and Literature because of people like e.e. cummings, who wrote poems using words like a philosopher:

one's not half two. It's two are halves of one ...
one is the song which fiends and angels sing:
all murdering lies by mortals told make two.

My interpretation? We are all ONE, but when we lie-cheat-steal-murder we separate ourselves from other people. Oh, I love words!

2. Other writers inspire me, and I am good at taking note of what they say. Currently, I have three quotes to inspire me:

At the top of Bonnie's Books: "Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow." ~~~ Lawrence Clark Powell

At the top of Words from a Wordsmith: "The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself." ~~~ Albert Camus

Posted beside my computer: The secret to writing a book? I think it's this: Take good notes and write often enough that it starts to accumulate." ~~~ Colleen Redman

3. I have a very active imagination! The other day Colleen, having noticed the plethora of blogs I have (don't ya just love words like plethora, meaning "extreme excess, an embarrassment of riches"?), wrote to me:

Hi Bonnie, Are you over here thinking up themes for new blogs?!

Yep, I admit it. Before you can DO it, ya gotta THINK it, and I'm definitely a thinker, a dreamer, a midnight schemer.

4. Next strength? Persistence. Another word for that is stubbornness, but I'll say persistence because it sounds better. Once upon a time I called that strength stick-to-it-iveness. I stick to my writing until I have polished it to the rhythm I want. I edit, I say it out loud (or more often, in my mind) until the flow pleases me. And not only with poetry, but with prose. I don't want to stumble over a word that just SITS there in the middle of a sentence, getting in the way. So I keep tightening my writing, tweaking it here and there, giving it another syllable or two, taking out the fluttery useless words, finding a slightly better way of expressing myself. I hang in there, trying not to hang myself with any loose threads hiding among the words.

5. And the last one for today ... translating stuff into understandable language. When I was a new pastor out visiting, one woman said something that has stuck with me, partly because she inadvertantly STUNG me with her words:

Now HE was a good preacher! He was so smart that he used BIG words nobody understood. Really smart man.

First reaction was thinking, "She thinks I'm not as smart as that guy!" Second thought was, "No, he wasn't smart, but STUPID and I am smart enough to use words people understand!" Another person who was telling me about their former pastors said of one:

He would knit together a pretty good sermon, but he didn't stop there. No, he kept going until he unraveled what he had said and I couldn't figure out his point. But Bonnie, I remember your sermons!

Toward the end of my years as pastor, I was asked to preach for the community's joint Thanksgiving Service. Having just the day before preached on a text that was perfect for that setting, I decided to use it again, thinking it would be a couple of months later and people from my church would have forgotten most of what I'd actually said ... and those who remembered would forgive me. At the end of the service as people were filing out and shaking my hand, one mother whose ten-year-old stood there beside her grinning, said to me:

He remembers you preached that before, and he noticed the parts you had changed!

It had been so memorable that even a ten-year-old remembered it months later! Translating the big words into understandable language IS a strength, right? Right, so I claim it, even if I don't always sound erudite.

What are your five strengths as a writer? Feel free to answer in a comment. I'm tagging Dewey, Nancy, Absolute Vanilla, Tricia, Scarlett, and YOU. If you choose to do this meme and post the answers, let me know so I can come by and read them ... and so I can post links here for all my readers to come see what you say.
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9-24-07 Bonus tag: Wendy at Caribousmom. I just today read some of her writing and know how skilled she is at it. Go read her article about guacamole, and you'll see what I mean. Sooooooo..... Wendy, I'm tagging YOU.
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UPDATE:

Tricia's response: http://missrumphiuseffect.blogspot.com/2007/09/writing-meme.html

Scarlett's response: http://wanderlustscarlett.blogspot.com/2007/09/cinco-grande-or-big-five.html

Dewey's response: http://deweymonster.com/?p=387

Wendy's response: http://caribousmom.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2007/9/24/3249967.html

Vanilla's response: http://absolutevanilla.blogspot.com/2007/09/writing-strengths-meme.html