When you first decide you are better than "them" at the writing racket, remember that the polls may still be open. How do you measure your excellence? By the big, grownup words you use? Well, if you want to be James Fenimore Cooper reincarnated, press on. You can stick "vouchsafed" and "revelation" and "spirited narrative" and "obtuse intelligence" right there in the middle of your redneck dialogue at Whitey's Esso, so that everyone can see at a glance that your neck is pale and pure.
        Now, let's listen to the conversation at the real, non-fiction Whitey's. If there's a word of more than two syllables bouncing around in there, it's probably something technical, like "alternator" or "Talledega." No "circumspection" at all.
        When I've been asked in the course of my writing career to critique work by others, I usually beg off, muttering something about press of business or leprosy or something. No, it isn't because I don't want to help. Actually, I do. The more people I can infect with the writing illness, the less likely it is that I'll be singled out when the Congressional Council on Good Communications sends in the black helicopters to suppress scribblers.
        What deters me is the awful feeling, nay, knowledge that I will be treated to a long and la-boriously-written piece of absolute taffy. It's al-most an axiom that when a chap (or chappette) puts together a longish piece not easily taken at one sitting, his friends and relatives tell him he really has a gift for writing and should press on to publication. Surely, if he can use all those "pretty" words, his fame is assured. Stands to reason.
        Alas, if he has any fortitude, he submits his work somewhere. He soon finds that most editors are biased against his sort of art. Little does he suspect that editors have been put upon this planet to protect the rest of us from poorly written prose.
        Look at what you have written most recently. Highlight the words of more than two syllables. If the page now looks as though it has a case of measles compounded by jaundice, maybe you need to revisit the sentences so infected. Now I'm not saying that longer words are bad, but simply that there can be too many of them. Short and snappy always trumps elegant and sedate. Compare Cooper, in The Deerslayer:
  
"Sweeps, or large oars, however, are sooner rendered of use by the raw hands than lighter implements . . ."
  
with Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast:
  
"After we had furled the sails and got dinner, we saw the Ligotte nearing, and she had her anchor before night."
  
        In one example we learn that big oars work better in clumsy hands. In the other we have the ship's work, a meal, the sighting of the sister ship,

 and her subsequent docking. Moving on, as the saying goes.
        One reason many budding writers swerve into the aisle where the Big Words are stored is that they feel the need to DESCRIBE everything fully. After all, that's what writers do. But many do not. It's not easy, but a very effective way to describe a character or a venue is by letting the reader see it as though he were really there, looking around or just getting to know a stranger. Try making a flash picture in your mind of a small town's main street. Got it? Everything? No, first impressions are entirely controlled by your need to know things. Are you wanting to shop? Then you notice that there are many stores. Do you want to sit and rest? Then the park and its benches are your first impression. Are you a young rake on the prowl for young opposite-sex people? Then the people are your focus. And not even all of their parts. Everyone has unique areas of attention when viewing the opposite sex.
        Now, in the course of developing the story, you can bring in each of those features of the town as it attracts the attention of the hero. The girls first, maybe, then the barber shop because he feels scraggy, then the sidewalk because he has caught his heel on a loose brick, then maybe looking up through the stately elms because he wonders if that sky is bringing rain. Each of those things can occur at a different time in the story. By spacing them out you do two things. First, you tend to "simple down" the descriptives to the level of the action at that point in the story. Secondly, there's no need to get really flowery since the venue has been broken down into little bits that do not go well with sesquipedalian words. If the hero says to himself, "Shit! She's never coming and it looks like rain!" he isn't likely to be saying it in a Elysian landscape replete with exotic flora. He will, instead, be looking out a dirty window at the dark sky.
        Listen to the champion story-tellers among us. The kids. Ask a youngster about the movie he's just seen and he'll give you the whole plot, and all in simple language. Does he leave anything out? Well, ask yourself what you could insert to make it easier to understand. Of course, you might want to clump some ideas together in compound sentences, or correct some of his innocent grammar, but the kid tells the story. Making it into a "grownup" story may be a challenge. Okay, take the challenge. Does "I see the cat." get any better if you observe your feline companion?
        Little words do not necessarily mean little ideas. A plot is a plot. If it's shaky, you can't rein-force it with prosthetic circumlocutions and trans-mutate it into literature. Big oars are easier for the beginner to handle. Not "sooner rendered of use." If you really can't resist using the fat words, then create a character who uses them in dialogue. That will allow you to get it out of your system without transferring his bad habit into yours. You have enough of your own