The Ideal Editor – Writer Relationship: A Chat Log
July 29th, 2009
No comments
12:57 PM me: happy birthday honger
Are you still in the savage lands?
12:58 PM Joe: No, back in NYC.
How goes it?
me: Compared to what?
12:59 PM Joe: I don’t know. Penury, disgrace?
me: Not bad at all.
I learned a new word while writing a small story for Texas Observer and then didn’t get the chance to use it in the story
1:00 PM Yonic: describing or alluding to the vaginal, the womb. Counterpoint to phallic.
Joe: Lousy word. No onomatopoeia.
me: hahaha
1:01 PM Joe: Only William Buckley could pull that word off.
And he’s dead.
me: That sounds like a challenge.
I got away with ’surfeit’.
1:02 PM Joe: Surfeit is a good word.
me: “Sudden surfeit of earthquakes,” no less
1:03 PM Joe: Thats no good. Too many S’s, for one. Plus it’s not like you can have an accumulation of earthquakes. They’re not like pies. You can have a surfeit of pies.
Spate of earthquakes? Series? String?
Spate of earthquakes? Series? String?
1:04 PM Surge?
1:06 PM me: I think, considering surfeit’s root and usage to mean overabundance, you can have a surfeit of earthquakes in some cases, like 5 over seven days centered on a town that had never had seismic activity at all prior to those
Joe: It’s wrong and you know it.
me: and since when is alliteration undesirable? I think it is a lost art
goddammit
Joe: You can’t have an overabundance of earthquakes. One is too much.
One earthquake is an overabundance.
1:07 PM me: But they are tiny adorable earthquakes!
Joe: And earthquakes don’t abound.
I don’t think you can have an overabundance of anything that isn’t a physical thing.
Can you have a surfeit of wind?
ANSWER ME THAT MOTHERFUCKER
1:08 PM me: The crab fishermen on the Bering Sea would say yes
Do you hate America now?
Joe: If they’re illiterate they would.
me: <— lolz
okay fine, I’ll change it
Joe: You went to college so you wouldn’t have to be a crab fisherman.
1:09 PM me: I dislike overabundances of wind
Joe: String of earthquakes works.
Use that.
me: no, I’m going to use spate
Joe: String of intensifying earthquakes? That “ten” sound in the middle really propels it.
me: so you know how emasculated I am
Joe: Feel that rhythm.
1:10 PMAnd there’s a hint of alliteration.
Don’t be emasculated. Just don’t use words incorrectly.
fucker
1:12 PM me: fair enough.
Categories: Fail File, Language, Short Stories, Long Odds, The Work, The Writing Process