Why the world needs editors

Today The Oregonian’s headline announced sad news: “Teddy Kennedy, Senate lion, dies.”

Accidentally adding annoyance to injury, a photo accompanied the story, which had a lengthy caption in bold type attributed to Rep. Patrick Kennedy, the deceased senator’s son, who described his father as “the penultimate senator.”

And now you’ve caught the error that neither The Oregonian, The New York Times New Service that originated the story, nor the Associated Press that spread the article across the country managed to note in time. Penultimate, of course, means next to last. Not uber-ultimate or whatever the speaker was thinking. Next to last.

Actually, it also means “of or pertaining to a penult,” but try using that in a sentence.

Now you could say: but that is the actual quote, we can’t alter what a quoted individual says.  And I would agree, but an editor can always choose not to run the part of the quote that makes its utterer look careless or ill-spoken or uneducated.

Well, no harm done, right? But again I disagree. Thanks to this widely disseminated news story, a common solecism will be further imbedded into everyday usage. This happens all the time, however, so perhaps I’m being a martinet to even object. “Terrific” once meant “terrible,” for instance; decades of mistaken assumptions that “aggravated” meant “irritated” have led to that being the word’s most frequent connotation.

And don’t get me started on words that are frequently misused to signify the reverse of what they actually mean: reactionary, hoi polloi, and disinterested, to name just a few. I could go on and on…..

Shining on brightly

Okay, so this video’s relevance to this blog may be a tad attenuated. But it’s largely about the explosion of interconnectivity on Planet Earth, thanks to technology and its avid deployment. Perhaps this interests us at SuperScript because our work as editors, in the way we do it (with more than half our clients not residing locally) would not have been possible until relatively recently.

Actually, this video does have a fun fact for wordsmiths. Today, writers composing in the English language have about 540,000 words available to them. Does that sound like a lot? Or too few? Shakespeare would have been gobsmacked. For all the words he personally added to the tongue, we now have nearly five times as many at our disposal as he did in his day.

So enjoy, relish, rhapsodize.

Oregon Shakespeare Fest: not just for dead writers anymore

Scene from OSF's production of Dead Man's Cell Phone, by Sarah Ruhl

The New York Times ran a great article today about the Oregon Shakespeare Festival that may surprise you. If you haven’t visited OSF since it was all classics all the time, you’re past due for a pilgrimage to Ashland. Quietly but increasingly, the company has been mounting more contemporary and original work for years now, and with Bill Rauch’s advent, it’s become a veritable hotbed of fresh takes on the classics sharing the slate with exciting new work like Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone, and world premieres such as Bill Cain’s Equivocation.

Of special interest to you as a writer is an ongoing project commissioned by the fabulous Alison Carey. Says Alison,

Over the next ten years, American Revolutions: The United States History Cycle will create up to 37 new plays sprung from a moment of change, inspiration or conflict in United States history. We are at a time of great change as a nation, and have a lot of choices to make about the future. We hope these plays will ask questions and inspire conversations that will help light the way to our best directions.

Where will the writers come from to realize this project? You can ask Alison herself, who is so accessible as to leave her email address on the OSF site. Before you toss your hat in the ring, however, read Alison’s description of the endeavor to get a sense of its vast breadth. Knowing the company, the artists and the sheer scope of the concept, who wouldn’t want to be part of it?

Oh sure, now I tell you.

Where have I been for the past month, while The Editing Room has languished? Preparing for and then helping to produce the legendary Willamette Writers Conference, that’s where. This four-day lollapalooza of everything writerly took place here in Portland from August 6-9, and though it kicked me into next week, it was all I’d heard it would be and more.

My specific job was to recruit and then deploy volunteers for the Programs side of the event – an area that includes the seminars and writing workshops in addition to various special events, like Manuscript ER and other ad hoc forms of counsel. This area alone took over 40 volunteers (the whole span of time requires more than 200), and they are kept in constant motion.

Unexpected boon: WW president and writer’s writer C.S. Whitcomb spent long stretches of the Conference, between gigs, in the volunteer headquarters with me, where we talked at length about the art and business of writing – heaven!

While there are plenty of workshops at the Conference that deal with purely literary endeavors, by and large its principal focus is the business of writing: how to get an agent, pitching your latest work to publishers and editors, practicing your pitches with consultants, that sort of thing. You can get schooled in how to write a query letter, what to negotiate in a contract, whether self-publishing is a viable option, etc. Most importantly, you can break out of the writer’s self-imposed isolation and talk about the trials and tribs and epiphanies of the literary life.

The Conference reflects the market, of course, and issues revolving around the crafting and sale of screenplays are legion. But all genres are covered to one degree or another, as are specific literary forms like poetry and playwriting. It’s a vertiginous time, and you come away with an overheated brain but also with renewed enthusiasm. Maybe your ambitions aren’t so over-reaching after all. The 800+ Conferences attendees don’t think so.

Come on down next year – the Conference’s 41st.

Happy Fourth

Because SuperScript is taking a holiday today (the first day off in more than two months!) to assay some overseas travel (Portland to Vancouver, anyway), where we’ll indulge in card-playing, overeating and gaping at pyrotechnics, we’re coasting today by simply referring you to one of our favorite literary blogs, Marissabidilla, which in turn refers to you Oscar Wilde’s lovely and oddly overlooked short story, “The Remarkable Rocket.”

Have a scintillating Fourth, and catch you on the flip.

Aaaaaand……we’re back.

You know that handy old bromide: “a victim of one’s own success.” Yes, well. That’s my excuse for neglecting this blog. To my astonishment, I’ve been happily awash in editing assignments as of late (amazing for a young business, especially in this economic climate), and that’s left little time for musing and bemusings.

I will do better by you, I promise. But for today, I’ll do why every beleaguered blogger does when time gets scarce – I’ll draw your attention to other people’s bloggings, sloggings and slingings of interest.

To wit: Brian Doyle on the droll schadenfreude of vigilante apostrophism.

Plus Mark Helperin hector the internets with his new book Digital Barbarism: A Writer’s Manifesto.

And just for fun:

If you’re a grammar geek like I am, and actually enjoy tracking down delicacies such as how the AP Stylebook differentiates between the verb forms of “tweet” and “twitter,” you love the insouciance of Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips.

There. That should keep you for a while.

English: now with a million words to choose from

All right, so the concept may be bogus, but according to the Global Language Monitor, the English language gets its millionth word this coming Wednesday at 10:22am (Stratford-upon-Avon time).

How does GLM know? Elementary. Because it has ascertained that neologisms are currently entering the language at the rate of 14.7 a day , it’s statistically likely we’ll get to a million words, including those freshly mined, just 30 scant hours from now.

Not everyone accepts GLM’s pronouncement, of course. Leave it to CNN to round up a few nay-sayers. While you’re reading the cheerfully skeptical article on its site, be sure to click on the inner link (what we called an “inset box” in the previous millennium) to see how English stacks up to other tongues — especially in regard to number of words vs. number of speakers vs. degree of global influence. There may be surprises for you there.

Now that’s commitment

Meet Marc Strömberg, a graphic designer and part-time magazine publisher with a sore leg. As part of Mr. Strömberg’s ongoing campaign to get his readers to look at text in new ways, all the ink for the next issue of Tare Lugnt (which means “take it easy” in Swedish) has gone onto his body. That’s right. The feckless young man has tattooed his work onto his lower leg.

Upon finding this story, my colleague Mighty Toy Cannon quipped: “I hope he had a good copyeditor.”

Photographic documentation will ensure the issue survives its author’s middle age, with that time of life’s characteristic thickenings, but he’ll always carry his writing with him, whether it’s legible or not. I’ll think of this young editor/writer the next time my own will to write starts to flag.

Grammar matters, evidently

While it is hardly news to attorneys that much can hinge on a turn of phrase or even a single word, now the Supreme Court itself is weighing in on the subject. So by all means, take advantage and be schooled, as the Court helpfully decides what an adverb modifies.

Britain’s new poet laureate

Great Britain just ended a 341-year-old streak for poets of the male persuasion by giving the honor of poet laureate to a woman for the first time: Carol Ann Duffy, one of the nation’s most popular and critically acclaimed poets.

According to the Guardian, Ms. Duffy only accepted the job in order to break with the tradition. I’m just glad because she’s a fiercely honest artist whose poetry lacks the writerly folderol that sometimes muddles the art form. Or so I think. But here, see for yourself.

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Valentine by Carol Ann Duffy

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.

Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or a kissogram.

I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring,
if you like.

Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.