As my college friends and fellow English majors would attest, I was never a Shakespeare fan, even though I once attempted a spoof of “Hamlet” entitled “Omelet.” It must have had a Humpty Dumpty-ish sort of plot.

Now, eons after college and having endured a few of Shakespeare’s plays, I have been introduced to the bard in new ways. Thanks to a new Writers’ Mill friend from England and a book by Mark Forsyth*, I have re-discovered Will Shakespeare as a fellow practicing writer and one with astonishing creative talent.

According to a recent presentation by Lyndsay Docherty, a writer, teacher, artist, musician, and lifelong Shakespeare fan, of Lancashire, England, the young Shakespeare was not much for classical scholarly academics. On the other hand, he was intrigued by the Renaissance studies of Greek rhetorical figures (figures of speech patterns that punctuate written language with style.)

Fascinated with these stylistic patterns, Shakespeare practiced and worked diligently to perfect his craft using figures of speech such as alliteration, irony, antithesis, rhymes, rhetorical questions, and much more. His best plays show his mastery of elegant and eloquent writing. No matter what he wrote, he wrote it with style.

I appreciate a writer who works hard, thinks, contemplates, revises, and revamps to make his writing the best it can be. With the help of Forsyth’s delineations of the figures of rhetoric, I’m trying to consciously incorporate more of these figurative techniques into my own writing.

Lyndsay revealed another of Shakespeare’s talents, one I’d never heard about: He was an inventor of new words! Here, thanks to Lyndsay, are a few of Shakespeare’s 1,705 words he added to the English lexicon and the plays they appeared in: (Not all of his newly minted words caught on, such as “armgaunt” meaning having skinny arms.)

Bandit, “Henry VI” part 2; critic, “Love’s Labor’s Lost”; dauntless, “Henry VI” part 3; dwindle, “Henry IV” part 1; lackluster, “As You Like It”; Elbow (as a verb,) “King Lear.”

In his ability to enliven the English language with new words, I find Will Shakespeare a kindred soul to the late Portland writer, Brian Doyle, whose lively mind also sprinkled made-up words throughout his works.

Some have asked how publication of my novel “Promise Full of Thorns” is proceeding at Sunbury Press. I now have a blurb for my back cover that might see publishing daylight before the end of this year. I’ve exchanged cover blurbs with a fellow Sunbury author, James R. Dubbs, whose novel “Confessions of a Farmers Market Romeo” will be released soon.

More on Jim’s novel in my next blog, along with comparisons of modern publishing with Shakespeare’s publishing concerns.

*Mark Forsyth, “The Elements of Eloquence”