EDITOR@WORK: harridan

WORDS FOUND RECENTLY

Bludger: a scrounger; an idle or lazy person.

Factotum: an employee who does all kinds of work.

Fastness: a secure place well protected by natural features.

Harridan: a strict, bossy, or belligerent old woman.

Parlous: full of danger or uncertainty; precarious.

Peremptory: insisting on immediate attention or obedience, especially in a brusquely imperious way; not open to appeal or challenge; final.

Pukka: genuine; of or appropriate to high or respectable society; excellent.

Solecism: a grammatical mistake in speech or writing; a breach of good manners; an instance of incorrect behaviour.

Sybaritic: fond of sensuous luxury or pleasure; self-indulgent.

Sylphlike: (of a woman or girl) slender and graceful.

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EMAIL: tgilli52@gmail.com BLUESKY: PROFILE

MORE EDITOR@WORK BLOG ENTRIES

• You really DO need an editor

• Reminders for would-be novelists

• What I do when I'm editing

• What I charge (it's a deal) and what I edit

• Slogging through the Internet

• J-school: More eyes on your stories

• J-school: Go out and learn

• Rookie mistakes for magazine writers

BLOG ENTRIES BY TOM GILLISPIE

• Resume for a writer and editor

• An editor's views on powerful writing

• Advice for be and would-be novelists

• Links to TG's stories online

• Favorite quotes

• What I do when I'm editing

ANECDOTES BY TOM GILLISPIE

• Wipeout at Death Valley

• Days with rainbows

• A desperate writer working in the dark

• Yer OUTTA there!

ENTRIES FROM THE DOG BLOG

• Katie cried

• Growl and pull

• 13-plus years with my dog Lady

• ... said the spider to ...

• The Dog Diary (2014)

• YIP! YIP! The stereo-sound huskies

• What Lady and Michael Jackson had in common

BLOG ENTRIES FROM THE AUTO RACING JOURNAL

• Angel in Black: Remembering Dale Earnhardt Sr.

(a book of great stories about the Intimidator)

• Then Junior Said to Jeff...

(the book of great NASCAR stories)

• My best day as a sports writer

• Jeff Gordon's milk toast to Dale Earnhardt

• Wayne Auton: A life in racing

Preeclampsia & eclampsia - causes, symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, pathology

I'm reading 10 lb. Penalty, a horse-racing novel by Dick Francis. I just encountered the word PREECLAMPSIA. The narrator is explaining his own birth and his mother's death.

Preeclampsia is a complication of pregnancy. With preeclampsia, you might have high blood pressure, high levels of protein in urine that indicate kidney damage (proteinuria), or other signs of organ damage.

Left untreated, preeclampsia can lead to serious — even fatal — complications for both the mother and baby.

Francis's narrator just mentioned QUADRATIC EQUATIONS. A quadratic equation is a second-degree polynomial equation in one variable, typically written as ax² + bx + c = 0, with at most two solutions.

Believe it or not, Francis used the word CATAMITE. It's a boy kept for homosexual practices.

Francis called someone POLYMORPHOUS. Its meaning: occurring in several different forms or stages: "She is polymorphous in thought and flexible in action."

Next, he had someone mention a HARRIDAN, a strict, bossy, or belligerent old woman: "a bullying old harridan."

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EMAIL: tgilli52@gmail.com BLUESKY: PROFILE