Thesaurus

[Omni]

6. Break any of these rules sooner than saying anything outright barbarous.

Of Orwell's rules this is the one to take with you. Every writer has his or her own style and writing advice, which, while often sensible for that writer's particular circumstances, should never be interpreted as law. I had a phase where I experimented constantly with thesaurus words, interesting syllable counts and metaphors; I can't imagine it read super well at the time, but my writing now brings a lot of that experimentation with it. I'm wordy, but I've found that concise voice in my own way, and now (at least I think) I don't sound pretentious or thesaurus-wielding. It wasn't because I read lots of advice from writers. It's because I read hundreds of books from all different time periods and styles, and wrote a lot lot lot of drivel, and found my place among them.

Boom. This right here.