“A euphemism is most apt to be noticed if it is new. When an occupation once regarded as lowly wants to come up in the world, it may try to shed the name that signaled its humble status: ‘farmers’ become ‘agriculturists,’ ‘garbage collectors’ become ‘sanitation engineers,’ ‘janitors’ become ‘custodians.’ Our awareness of the euphemism is shown by our tendency to laugh at what we regard as false pretension. Yet other occupations that upgraded themselves in the past enjoy euphemistic names that are no longer questioned. One may laugh at an ‘undertaker’ who calls himself a ‘mortician’ or a ‘funeral director,’ but not at a money-handler who calls himself a ‘financier’ or a tradesman who calls himself a ‘businessman.’ These euphemisms are accepted at face value — to the benefit of those labeled by them.”

–Dwight Bolinger, Language: The Loaded Weapon 73 (1980).

let’s see…

“prunes” become “dried plums”
“unemployed mom” becomes “freelance editor”

Last Saturday we had Ambrosia over to play while Kelly went to the funeral of her friend’s son.
Despite the sad reason for Ambrosia’s visit, we all had a wonderful time with her. Ambrosia wanted to play dress-up, so I got out all the stuff and we all dressed up as princesses in flowing silk scarves, tiaras, turbans, boas, and veils. Luckily we had enough magic wands to go around and we all danced to Enya in our princess costumes. It was very fun. Lucas and Ian got into it as well. Later we rode tricycles to the park and we played there.

Baby Tidoo, Lucas’s dolly, has taken on an even greater importance in the family over the last week. Suddenly, Tidoo has a strong personality, with clear likes and dislikes, habits, and plans. Tidoo seems now to be more of an imaginary friend than just a doll. Lucas talks about her as though she were his peer.
• Tidoo gets to eat doughnuts for breakfast
• Tidoo eats whole bowls full of salt
• Tidoo likes trains as much as Lucas does
• Tidoo goes on play dates
• Tidoo and Kimberlee are good friends
• Tidoo is sick and doesn’t want to go to school some days

And other stuff…
Saturday night my parents took me to dinner and to see Jack Gallagher’s new one-man show “What He Left,” at the B Street Theatre. I’m planning to write more about that another day. Suffice it to say that it was a great show and it brought forth some interesting stories from my father.

Grandpa Glen came over for dinner last night. When I reminded Lucas about this in the afternoon before Glen arrived, Lucas said, “Oh good. I love my Grandpa Glen.” I was careful to relate this story to Glen last night. Unfortunately, Grandpa Glen seems sometimes to feel like he’s missing out on Lucas’s development. We don’t see him as often as we see the other, closer grandparents. It was a nice evening, without too much political discussion, and grandpa read Lucas several stories and listened to the endless train talk with the degree of fascination that someone who doesn’t listen to it constantly can still muster.

Lucas’s relationship with Jackson (a new boy) at preschool is improving. In fact, Lucas seems to be slowly accepting the new students from Mulberry Cottage, which recently closed its doors, into the Hidden Treasure fold. (At first he was resisting making new friends.) Lucas told me last night that Jackson hasn’t been “playing guns at me” and is playing trains with Lucas instead. “I like that much better.” He also reported that he spent some time yesterday talking with Abigail, another new student. “Abigail is nice. We talked a while.” Max, however, is still playing guns. Lucas is convinced that Max hates him. This social stuff is tricky.

“There is one tendency of speech which, though founded on a firm basis of psychology, is constantly spoken of by those who know nothing of the ways of linguistics, as new and vulgar in the extreme. This is the inclination to use words more grandiloquent or more honorable than the occasion calls for or admits. Such a tendency has characterized the languages of all cultivated nations, and seems to be inherent in the human mind. Vanity and social ambition, on the one hand, combine with courtesy and servility on the other, to support and enforce this natural bent, and the disposition to magnify one’s office contributes its share in producing the final result.”

–James Bradstreet Greenough & George Lyman Kittredge, Words and Their Ways in English Speech 317 (1901).

I appears that I didn’t get the fiction job I bid on recently.

It’s a shame because it would have been my first taste of editing fiction and would have required me to grow and learn new stuff. I suspect I bid too high, but I prefer to err on the side of valuing my time and work appropriately and losing jobs, than killing myself working for peanuts.

In coming up with my bid, I spent a couple of hours reading over a very long and intricate book proposal and then several sample chapters. I made an estimate of the hours it might take me to do the job, evaluated the (first-time) author’s writing, and provided him with some feedback and a few sample edits of short passages (so he could see how I would edit his work). My analysis concluded that while the author’s plot, characters, and story might indeed be adequate and interesting enough to get published, he had about 25-30% more words than were really necessary to tell the story. I figured streamlining and simplifying the text to make it friendly to the reader would require a fairly heavy edit: I would have had to touch nearly every line in the 170,000 word novel. That prospect is scary to me, given that authors frequently are fragile creatures.

It might not have been my bid though. I might have been too heavy-handed with the prose. That’s the balance the editor has to achieve, the way I see it. That is the key to editing fiction. The editor must find the perfect degree of involvement and that depends entirely on the specific work and the specific author. Oftentimes, an author expects me to read his/her mind to know what degree of involvement they want me to have. This is true when I’m editing non-fiction too. However, my experience is that non-fiction authors are often really open to revisions that improve their work. Fiction is more emotional.

I asked this prospective client, “What level of editing are you looking for? Substantive editing? Copyediting?” (and provided him with definitions and examples of both types).

He said, “I believe my best answer to this question is, unfortunately, a very positive, ‘I don’t know.’ I can only admit that I am too close to the work to objectively attempt to edit the material and would trust in an editor to have the reader’s best interest at the heart of their decision making. At this point I need to secure the best editing job available as if I were going to self-publish the first novel in the series for a June release.” (See what I mean? He’s a very wordy guy.)

I took him at his word and evaluated the text with the reader’s best interest at heart, assuming there might not be any other editor (such as an aquisitions editor at a publishing house) intervening on the reader’s behalf.

In a way, I’m not sorry to see it go to someone else. I don’t really feel like justifying every single change, every single decision I make. Still, this novel is the first of six planned novels, and a long-term gig like that–if he actually managed to write a six-novel series–might have been nice. C’est la vie!