Argh Ink

So I am back at work on AKMG, and revising what I’ve written and thinking about the Wild Ride copy edit (which went to Bob yesterday, so now it’s his nightmare) all of that has made me think about punctuation. I used to be an English teacher, which meant that punctuation was rules, as in two independent clauses without a conjunction must be joined by a semi-colon. I was all over The Chicago Manual of Style. And Strunk and White. And The MLA Handbook. Then I became a writer and thought, “Maybe not.”
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You have to go see this wonderful blog, written by Pam Epstein who’s writing her dissertation on marriage, drawing on personal ads from mid-nineteenth and early twentieth century newspapers. The ads are fascinating–there’s a novel in just about every one of them–and the discussion is great, too. I really liked her insights in comparing the personal ads to Governor Sanford’s e-mails. You should go look.

So Milton and Veronica and Wolf were all screaming at the door onto the screened porch this afternoon, and I went down to see what was up, and there were three large birds in the porch. (The doors were open because little birds kept getting in and then beating themselves up trying to get out.) I mean LARGE birds; at first I thought they were turkey buzzards because we have a lot of buzzards here, but then I saw their heads which were iridescent peacock blue with little springy things on top (I’m sure there’s a name for those but it’s not a coxcomb like a turkey, more the sprigs on the top of a peacock’s head only not so many) and I thought they were wild peacocks, but the feathers were all wrong, brown and speckly, and there wasn’t that huge train tail. I have searched on the internet and can’t find anything like them under “pheasant,” “grouse,” or god help me “peacock.” What are they?

No, I didn’t get a picture. Milton got out and rushed them and there was much screaming and then they broke through the screen and flew away like bats out of a screened porch. I do have two feathers, one that I had to take away from Veronica who was being vicious with it. Yes, I know I filed this under “pictures.” I’m hoping to add one when somebody tells me what these birds were. Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?

Addendum:
After searching for juvenile peahen as advised in the comments, I found this:

I’d swear this is the bird, but I don’t see how it can be since this is Ohio.

You know, when I started getting all the annoyed comments on the Copy Editor rant post, I figured some of them were coming from the copy editing class. Then a pal told me she’d forwarded the URL to a copy editor listserve, which I think is great. Any situation is better with two sides. So while we do have a new pseudonym post up to play on, I thought it was only fair put up another to give any copy editor a place to vent about authors or the business. I fully realize that complaining on the internet may be dangerous to a copy editor’s financial well being, but anybody who can disguise things sufficiently is welcome to post here showing the view from the other side.

Note:
I’ve just remembered why I’ve had such easy copy edits on the last books that I did solo. My editor told the copy editors to write any changes they wanted made to the text (as opposed to punctuation, spelling, etc) on post-it notes. That way I could make the change if I thought it was good and pitch the post-it if I didn’t without having to write “stet” on everything. I assumed this didn’t make any extra work for the copy editor since she was just writing what she wanted on a different piece paper. How much of a hassle was that? Because I’m going to remind my editor to do that again.

A friend of mine–you all know Rox, right, huge celebrity on Ravelry?–posted on a list we’re on this list of pseudonym generators (we have a mutual friend who’s choosing one now). (Rox says she found it on another web site that had found it on another website, but I’m citing Rox.) I read it and laughed and then got completely caught up in it. I’d seen the porn star one before, but this list is just . . . a wonderful time sink. So here you go, eleven ways to choose a pseudonym, brought to you by Rox:
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