Wages of Editry

[leahbobet]

June 29, 2011 Progress Notes:

"On Roadstead Farm"

Words today: 200.
Words total: 3200.
Reason for stopping: It's almost one in the morning, and it is a work night. A little is better than nothing.

Darling du Jour: The cistern hugged it like a newborn rabbit nestling against the light, a small tower built of scavenged tin and our Papa's own ingenuity.
Words Hallie Won't Admit to Knowing: Nothing today, actually.

Mean Things: A touch of the ol' PTSD. And maybe I'm being mean to fantasy tropes too, but I don't think we can disagree with that.
Research Roundup: A few more basic German words; the texture of hulled barley, for which I will probably just have to go to the health food store and pet barley.

Books in progress: Darren O'Donnell, Your Secrets Sleep With Me.
The glamour: Farmshare! An invitation to cool secret back-alley Shakespeare! And then a walk down to Kensington with Dr. My Roommate, because it was nice out and she needed stuff for stew. My feet have some glamorous blisters.

---

I think I am internalizing my editor.

Me: *typitytypity* That's a nice phrase.
Also Me: What's that mean, though? How's a soldier's sunburn different from a farmer's sunburn?
Me: Um.
Also Me: Most of these dudes were farmers anyway before they got scooped up to go to war.
Me: *attempts to find convoluted logic to justify pretty phrase*
Also Me: That's a lot of gymnastics, and it isn't working.
Me: It's pretty.
Also Me: I know.
Me: I could just leave it there, and screw the logic. I've gotten away with that before.
Also Me: Some editor will just call you on it. Actually, you know which one. She lives in New York.
Me: And then I could delay this decision until she does!
Also Me: You'd still have to fix it. Just fix it now.
Me: No, I could say "Too bad with your logic" and keep it.
Also Me: You'd also be wrong.
Me: Damn.

Moral of the day: It's the same damn sunburn. And this is what having a novel go through the professional editing process does to you.

Comments

[tithenai.livejournal.com]

Is it, though? IS IT?

Actually, I think I'm intuiting the way it might be different? I mean, soldier: I imagine the sunburn at the edges of armour, and the weight of armour and the heat of it and the fact that if the armour is metallic it will also be radiating heat. Farmer -- you're getting sunburned but wearing light clothing, you're sweating and can wipe at your unencumbered forehead to get the sweat off, you're not encased in a thing that will heat you further.

Love the dialogue, though.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

A soldier might hear different headgear too - I think there's a Holmes story where he and Mycroft are competing to deduce stuff about passers-by, and one of them spots a guy as recently ex-cavalry because his face is a bit more tanned on *one* side, indicating he had worn a tilted hat.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

True! Alas, no uniforms for this army. It was very DIY.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

If I could justify an armour budget... :)

(This was more an army of dudes with whatever shotguns and pointy knives they had on hand, heading off to the war in question with a spare change of clothes. It was, let's say, less than professional. Although the twisty chain of justifying logic I got for the word that replaced "sunburn" implies they did rig up some padded canvas shirt things and bandanas near the end, because the sand kept flying at them and getting up their noses and messing up their aim.)

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

The burn lines are in different places.

("Farmer's tan" is a specific thing around here, if that helps.)

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Oh no, I know; they just didn't have uniforms. It wasn't a very professional or big-budget army, and they mostly did the fighting in their shirtsleeves. I couldn't justify a discrete thing that was a soldier's tan under those circumstances.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

That's fair enough. Though the snap-brimmed hat or ball cap line, to me, is the definitive marker of farmer's tan.

[csecooney.livejournal.com]

I was about to say what Amal said, and then she said it. One thinks of a farmer's tan (or burn) being on specific areas of the body that certain kinds of clothes cover. A soldier's sunburn would be different because the uniform would cover different parts of the body. (I thought uniform, instead of "armor".)

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

True, but this wasn't exactly the kind of army that had uniforms, or a uniform budget. It was more the hasty, bring-your-shotgun kind of army.