Because I’m a writer, when one of my friends can’t think of the right word for what they’re trying to say, they turn to me. “You’re a writer. What’s the word I’m looking for?”

Hell if I know. What do I look like? A dictionary?

God’s honest truth: as a writer, I can never find the right word. This may surprise you. I know it surprises many of my friends. Well, you’d think I would know the right word for each job, judging from my writing skill. But in reality, my vocabulary sucks. I usually know the right word exists. I know I’ve heard it before, or read it before. It’s on the tip of my tongue. But I simply can’t think of what it is.

This is as true of English as it is of other languages that I (almost) know. I usually have little trouble with grammar, even in foreign languages, because grammar is based on a relatively small number of general rules that apply to most words and phrases and sentences, with only a few exceptions. But vocabulary, that’s 228,132 exceptions (and no real rules at all).

No wonder I never write unless I have a thesaurus on hand.