Zeilschmerz

John Hoenig is not your typical lexicographer. For the past seven years, John has been writing The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, which attempts to define emotions that are not currently described by any English word. Unlike Samuel Johnson or Noah Webster, who collected and analyzed words in common usage during their day, John makes up words to fill the gaps in our cultural lexicon.

One of his favorite concoctions is Zeilschmerz (pronounced “ZEEL-shmertz”), a German word that means the dread of getting what you want. “Being German, I know exactly how that feels,” John says. Perhaps you do, too—not because you’re German, but because you’re a writer.

It’s the feeling you get when you toil and sweat over a particularly elusive bit of dialogue until you hit upon a perfectly natural expression of it. You should feel happy, right? Instead you feel dread because now you’re obliged to bring the rest of the story up to this standard.

It’s the feeling you get when you’ve had countless interviews with agents at writers’ conferences, then have one of them offer you a contract. You should float out of that conference on cloud nine. Instead you fret about why this agent said yes when so many others said no. Is this fellow a newbie? a has-been? an incompetent?

This is a perfectly natural human emotion and now we have a word for it. Most times it’s a false warning, like a defective low tire pressure light that keeps flickering on your car’s dash. When you feel it, call it what it is, then get on with your life.

I wish you all the best with your writing this month. May you be productive and effective, with an uncommon number of days when you accomplish exactly what you set out to do. Then don’t fall prey to the curse of Zeilschmerz.

Joe Allison has been a member of the Indiana chapter of American Christian Fiction Writers since 2010. He lives in Anderson, IN. His non-fiction books include Setting Goals That Count and Swords and Whetstones.