But I'm about ready to fling the OED at my monitor. It's bad enough that my editor does not understand Regency slang. Finding substitutes for "up in the boughs" really cramps my style.
But I have to set myself impossible tasks like developing an important secondary character with Asperger's Syndrome and then try to describe it in terms available in 1809! Really, why don't I just hold a gun to my head?
Can I say he doesn't "socialize" well? The word was available in 1828 but not quite in the way I mean it. I tried showing his behavior in the first version, but having a teenager (another word I can't use) throw a fit over a bird cage as the hero and heroine meet is apparently not romantic. So I have to somehow explain to the reader why my heroine is so concerned over her little brother without using all the words needed to describe behavior not recognized in the nineteenth century.
Really, it's easier to write fantasy! Then everyone knows I made up everything. Reality in fiction...? The line is very finely drawn.
