Lynne Patrick
Don’t ask me where these trains of thought come from – the human brain is a strange and wonderful mechanism which makes all kinds of unexpected connections. I think this one began during a meeting with a printer a few days ago. Well, not a printer exactly, though he was from a printing firm.
He picked up a copy of one of our early titles and ran his fingers over it in a professional kind of way. Then he said, “I see you’re a fan of long grain, as I am.”
Time was, not so long ago, when I’d have smiled enigmatically, nodded briefly, and made a mental note to find out what long grain meant before I met this guy again. This time it gave my system a little shock when I realised I actually knew what he was talking about.
Which was what set this train of thought in motion: over the past five or six years I seem to have acquired a whole new language.
Words, their meanings, shades, nuances, capacity for carrying emotion and description, have fascinated me for as long as I can remember. Other people think in pictures; I think in words. I can spend hours writing and rewriting the most mundane of notes or e-mails, to make sure it conveys exactly the tone I’m aiming for (or if the person on the receiving end gets the wrong impression, at least I did all I could). I get annoyed, sometimes unreasonably so if you listen to my friends and family, when people use the wrong word, or the wrong part of speech; am I the only person left who thinks prevaricate means lie, or sees a difference between I tried to shout and I tried shouting?
There I go again, riding my favourite hobby horse, when all I really meant to do was ruminate on the new language I’ve learned since I’ve been in publishing. The words themselves are mostly familiar; it’s the meanings that have changed, or taken on extra layers.
A few examples:
Printer. It used to be the machine that stood on my desk next to the computer and had to be fed paper and ink cartridges every so often. Then every spring for a few years it was the guy a few miles away who produced several boxfuls of competition entry forms for me on a noisy machine in the little workshop behind his house. These days most of the time it’s one of several large manufacturing units capable of turning a little plastic disk into a pallet or two of beautiful, enthralling books.
(Pallet – that’s one I never really had a use for at all until recently, except in historical fiction when the poverty-stricken heroine slept on one made of straw. Which is a whole different world.)
Dues. I used to pay my dues at the health club or writers’ group every month. Now I scan the weekly sales figures eagerly to see how the dues are building up on our next unpublished title.
(Title – I’ve got used to referring to a book as a title, but it’s been a stretch. The title is still the name it’s been given.)
Returns. Ouch. Don’t like this one. In the past my only regular use of the plural of return was to wish people many happy returns on their birthday. In its new incarnation it’s my least favourite aspect of the book trade (aside from marketing fee – and don’t get me started on that one…) Sales of a title are building quite gratifyingly – then, boom! one of the wholesalers or bookshop chains decides to clear some space on the shelves, sends back half their stock and the total sales figure drops with a bump.
And in case you were wondering, though you probably either knew already or don’t really care – long grain is when the fibres in the paper go in the same direction on every page of a book, to make the book lie flat when it’s opened.
