Mission Impossible

Is it “asshole” or “arsehole?”

Too Serious For Numbers by Allie Brosh.

Perhaps a more philosophical debate than we’re used to around here, it’s a curious one.  I’m going through the task of editing Night’s Favour this week (…and next week, at the speed things are going).  Lots of little things come through from the various beta readers, and one of the themes presented was around setting.

Like, is it in the US?  Or NZ?  Portugal?  You get the idea.

In general terms, I wanted it to have a US-centric folksy charm, and I’ve got much of that nailed down so far.  But one of the things that’s killing me is the use of the word arsehole.  Or asshole.  Whatever.  Using the Queen’s English, we’d spell it arsehole.  But in a US world, it’s an asshole.  Do I bow to the spell checker or the audience?  Even then it’s not clear cut – Safari has been taught the Queen’s English, but loves asshole over arsehole.  Steve Jobs, bless.

MY GOD IT’S FULL OF STARS

This is my week so far.  I know, I know – one day in.  But I now have the utmost sympathy for:
1. The people who I asked to beta read my shit, and
2. People who work as actual editors.

The hardest thing today – in a first-world-problems kind of way – is the working between different manuscripts.  I’ve got my copy in Scrivener.  Scrivener’s great!  But it doesn’t really present work in a typical page number type of way.  Feedback’s come in as screenshots, freeform, PDF, all that jazz, so I’m trying to page through the manuscript to find out WTF people are talking about.

I’m off in search of beer, I think it’ll be easier to find than the second instance of “staccato” on page 143.