W O R D
By Erin Underwood

Interviewing may be an art, but it can also create art depending on the form and structure given to the answers. The One Word Interview examines a particular word, eliciting responses that create the effect of a literary mosaic when brought together. It seems especially appropriate for the inaugural One Word Interview to  feature writers, publishers and bloggers responding to the word WORD.

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When I see the word -WORD- the first thing that comes to my head is slang.
Lisa: “That shirt is sick!”
Amanda: “Word!”
Then comes the common word and word of mouth. Words can move people positively by helping someone out or negatively by causing a riot.
– Christina Brandao, founder Book Club

WORD
Jewels that fall from your lips to my ears and my lips to your ears. Divine way to agree that red is red and blue is blue. Secret tool to build beautiful and terrible worlds.
– Cecil Castellucci, author

WORD: How I make my living. The right one makes all the difference.
– F. Brett Cox, author

There’s a motto taped over my computer in inch-high letters, white on black, like a ransom note: “One word at a time.” I cut it out of Locus years ago when I decided it was time to get serious. When I’m stuck (specifically or generally), there’s the answer!
– Eljay Daly, author

In the beginning wasn’t the word. The word came absolutely last. First there was everything: so much everything. People were amazed. Someone made a noise: it wasn’t “wow”; “wow” didn’t exist. But someone else heard it, and–even before noise had meaning–agreed. Through concord the word was born.
– Carlos Hernandez, author

I believe that words define thoughts, which define words. The words in our language define our reality–our varieties of snow, the complexities of our emotions. Words imprison us and free us. Words really are us. Take away words, and you take away life itself.
– Nancy Holder, author

Word is the software with which I’ve written millions of words and made thousands of dollars as a technical writer and fiction writer. There’s comfort in that glowing white page of possibility, a cursor waiting to take you forward or backward, though I love it and hate it.
– Will Ludwigsen, author

Word(s) are who we are. Without them we have but action. They tell of our past, present and future. They can help, hurt or heal. Words can be life or death. Choose wisely.
– Georgia McBride, author and founder of YALITCHAT

As a writer, editor, and publisher, I play with words for money. But words are both vitally important (when choosing exactly the correct word for the precise meaning) and interchangeable symbols (whatever it takes to get across the concept). Thus, I recently described a cookie as both “friable” and “mmm”.
– Ian Randal Strock, author, editor and publisher

Just the right WORD in the right place at the right time is a thing of beauty quite apart from the fact that the thought it might be helping to express is totally wrong and maybe even ugly.
– Ray Vukcevich, author

This fifty-word interview is supposed to focus around a single word – and that word happens to be word. A tiny door leading into an enormous room. Recently, my words have been noir. Century. And American. Which takes me to veterans, on this day. Love the soldier, hate the war.
– Scott Wolven, author

Published by UNDERWORDS on November 14, 2010.