Monthly Archives: October 2013

Medieval Curses

Two hundred ninety-four pages total in North Sea Dawn and I am a little more than half-way through with edits. Today I read perhaps my favorite comment from my editor, “Is this curse word historically accurate?”

Now, that is something to set you back a few hours of research. Did you know that most modern curse words didn’t exist in the early middle ages? Yeah, me neither. I did discover, according to several other authors on the interwebs, and as we all know if you read it online it is true, that with a few guidelines you can make up your own derogatory terms, full of vitriol to damn your villainous characters.

1) Insult the mother

2) Insult their looks and/ or physical capabilities

3) Use animal names, e.g. shrew, pig, dog, etc.

4) Bring religion into it

Devil’s shrew. Lousey, pox-marked son of a whore. Naggle-toothed swine.

This easily ate up an hour that would have otherwise been productive. It was fun though, and marginally educational.

Rewrites

Well, my editor is done. Did you know that after editing, comes rewrites? It didn’t sound that daunting three months ago. Now it sounds like torture to go back and correct all those little, and some big, mistakes in my work.

Rewrites are like dusting.  The house looks great, I am completely satisfied, and then someone lifts up the bed skirt and reveals all of my dust bunnies. Great. Now I have to try to figure out all the weird attachments to my vacuum and spend an uncomfortable amount of time cleaning a place I never look. But thanks to my editor, now I know the dirt is there. I could walk away and leave it as is, but in the back of my mind, I’ll always be thinking about how I left things unfinished.

I’ve put it off for as long as I can. I’ve dallied with other projects and made excuses about setting aside a really good block of time so I can dig into North Sea Dawn again. There is no more procrastination. It has to be done.

I just need to check my email first.