Hello, my friends and the occasional relative!

Almost there! I am 91.6% or 93.2% of the way through the copy edit, depending on criteria used. Hopefully next weekend it will be done, and on to proofing.

This week I discovered I used word in an unusual fashion. I used ‘bulled’ as a verb, to indicate powerful unflinching movement. My glorious copy editor was arrested by this word, not being familiar with its use. I immediately wondered if this was what I term a ‘Roddyism’ where I basically just make shit up, and because it seems totally natural to me I just use it until it is pointed out to me how hopelessly wrong it is.

So, to my trusty Oxford English dictionary I went: the little one my mother bought me when I went off to university (okay, I stayed home at university) in the year of our lord nineteen hundred and sumty sumting. Bull was there, and papal bull, but no description of the use I wanted.

I pulled out the big gun and went to my unabridged Oxford English dictionary: 20 volumes with 3 slim books of post production additions. The word bull in all its permutations occupied 8 columns of text. That’s a lot of definitions. And Lo! There in column 8, the last one before the dictionary moves on to define bulla, was my validation. Or close enough to allow me to claim victory, anyway.

“To behave or move like a bull; to act with violence in the manner of a bull.” U.S. slang.

And it came with examples. Awesome examples from none other than Mark Twain and Arthur Miller! Little old me, rubbing shoulders with the greats, hahahaha! From Twain in 1884: “Up-stream boats . . bull right up the channel.” “The old fool he bulled right along.” From Miller in 1947: “Don’t come bulling in here. If you’ve got something to say be civilized about it.” “You can’t bull yourself through this one, Joe, you better be smart now.”

Validated by two giants of American literature. Truly I have arrived.

However. I clearly did not pick it up from them, I just used the word because I liked it, and the sense it conveyed to me. So really it’s a Roddyism that got lucky and had some referential back up.

Column 8 folks, of 8.

I cut the word out and replaced it with ‘strode brazenly’. Yes. If my copy editor doesn’t get it, chances are a lot of other people won’t either. Don’t put a stone in your reader’s shoe my friends, they’ll stop right there to pull it out, and leave the story to do so. I probably do that enough already, because of my fondness for old words and old usage, but this one was a bridge to far.

Mark and Arthur are disappointed in me, I know. I have a mission now, to one day use bulled when the context makes the meaning unmistakable. But today is not that day.

Keep your reader’s shoes comfortable, my friends, that way they’ll walk with you to the end of every story. Until next time, farewell.