Hopes and Homonyms

    Through this blog I'm hoping to reach out and connect with other writers, artists, nerds and gamers. Please comment if you are interested. I'm ever growing as an artist, writer and intellectual. 

    As a writer I have many enemies. Distraction, malaise, writer's block, writer's cramp, writer's urges to revamp. But today I want to talk about one particularly perturbing one: homonyms, specifically words with the same spelling.

    I am no stranger to metaphor and similes but in fantasy and fictitious genres you have to be careful not to confuse the reader. I invent all manors of otherworldly creatures, concepts and environments; metaphors could easily be taken literally if utilized improperly. "The ravenous wildcat man" could mean an anthropomorphic feline race in fiction if taken literally. Homonyms further confuse the issue.  

    Although context helps alleviate such problems I'd hate to break the flow of writing for words being confused.  In my editing the other day I came across one such case: "She attended collage early and rarely socialized, often angry. It began as an escape but wound into the same path taken as her farther: advanced robotics and programming." With "wound" used in a metaphoric way. I'd hate to interrupt the flow of the story by having readers incorrectly read it as "wound" like a flesh wound, instead of "wound" a simple past tense and past participle of wind. Like the snake wound around the branch. To wind a clock or wind blowing clouds is another unfortunate example of homonyms. There's no perfect solution. I can live with the prospect of confusion or rephrase the issues.