10.19.09
Posted in Editorial Musings at 8:44 pm by Administrator
Or perhaps you are perfectly logical, practical, not given to the occasional flight of fancy or crackpot scheme. Poor you. If, however, you do get a little loopy once in a while, you can call yourself and your scheme either hairbrained or harebrained.
Approximately three minutes ago, I learned that hairbrained is an accepted, but rare, variant of harebrained. Heck, even Lord Byron used hairbrained, according to Merriam-Webster’s Concise Dictionary of English Usage. So, to all those authors (I think there are at least two of you) who have written hairbrained only to have me change it to harebrained to save you from looking silly, I’m sorry. I was wrong, sort of. In my defense, I would argue that an accepted variant isn’t quite the same thing as a standard spelling. I would also argue that the notion of having hair on one’s brain makes my head itch in a most uncomfortable manner. So I will stick with harebrained. But, hey, you do what you want.
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10.12.09
Posted in Editorial Musings at 4:18 pm by Administrator
I’ve recently discovered Pandora Internet Radio. It’s so simple. You go to the site, choose the kind of music you want to listen to, and after maybe two whole mouse clicks your music is playing from your computer, for as long as you want and with only a short commercial for Pepto-Bismol every once in a while (at least that’s the commercial I heard this morning). Then you just have to remember not to navigate away from the site when you’re clicking around to do your various Internet things. That’s the part I haven’t quite mastered yet; I keep cutting off the music when I go to check my bank balance or write an e-mail.
This is terrific, for me and my clients. Music makes my brain work better. There is real scientific evidence for this out there somewhere (and if you happen to know where this evidence is, please let me know). My morning brain works best on baroque; my afternoon brain prefers opera, preferably Puccini, although it’s learning to be more flexible. But if I’m doing a difficult edit, I need to stick with something instrumental since anything with words—even if I don’t understand the words—can distract me. Also, I do tend to swoon during certain arias, and swooning cuts my productivity (again, somewhere there is scientific evidence on the adverse effects of swooning on editorial productivity).
Here’s something else you don’t need to know: I can write while listening to music with words I understand, but I absolutely cannot edit while listening to music with words I understand. But if I’m working on anything and can hear any sort of music that someone else is playing—even if it’s music I enjoy and could normally work right along with—the sound will drive me nuts and I won’t be able to work at all.
My brain is a strange place indeed.
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10.08.09
Posted in Editorial Musings at 8:14 pm by Administrator
Sometimes authors apologize to me for asking a lot of questions about their books. Some authors apologize after asking two questions, some after twenty questions, and then there are those who ask 7,482 questions and barely bother to thank me for answering all of them. (Of course I’m exaggerating; it was really only 7,481 questions.) Most authors do thank me though, even if they only ask one question.
So how many questions should authors ask? As many as they need to. I enjoy the give-and-take, the back-and-forth of “What about this chapter?” and “Should I add this or that or some other thing?” It’s all part of making the book better and—most importantly, at least from where I stand—making the author happy with the finished product. Because if the author doesn’t end up happy with the book and if they’re not proud to have written it, what was the point of it all?
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10.05.09
Posted in Editorial Musings at 9:52 pm by Administrator
Wanted: Word detective. Must enjoy dictionaries, books, journals, and other things filled with words. Must be good on the hunt, with a nose for good sources. Expect some travel to out-of-the-way places. Also expect some dust mingled with disappointment when the word trail goes cold. Perks include hanging out in the Rare Book Room and reading old issues of Playboy.
How’s that for a dream job? Sounds pretty good to me—well, maybe except for the Playboy part, but I guess ya gotta do what ya gotta do when you’re a word sleuth.
I bring this up because of an article in today’s Washington Post. Columnist John Kelly writes of a word sleuth named Jon Simon. Simon is a researcher for the Oxford English Dictionary and spends his days documenting the usage of words. Often what he’s after is a word’s earliest published example. Honestly, I was intrigued but not too excited by this story until Simon said this about his work: “It’s like the archaeology of words.” Hello! I’m wordy and I can dig archaeology, so this should be the perfect job for me, right? Well …
If I’m honest (and I do try to be) I would not last long as a professional word sleuth. Can you imagine being surrounded by all those words, all that information, all day long? How could you not get distracted by one neat thing after another? I suspect my word-sleuthing career would go the way of my Internet searches: Oh, that’s interesting. Huh … look at that, and that, and that. Ooh, and what’s this? I never knew that. That would make a great story for Adventures in Editing. Hmm … Now what was I looking for? After a week of this, I would get fired.
But isn’t it nice to know there are people in the world tracking down the origins of things like “nacho” and “bad hair day”?
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