A Man of Many Words> S. Portland writer a reference whiz

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Who knew that the 5-pound, 600-page Roget’s Superthesaurus sold all over was compiled by a drum-playing high school dropout who’s lived his whole life in South Portland?

Not the kind of book to make a writer famous, but it can make him a pretty decent living, even in Maine, as author Marc McCutcheon has learned.

“I always thought you had to have giant degrees or live in New York,” McCutcheon says. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t even graduate from high school.”

He hastens to add, “I’m not sure my publisher knows that.”

Now 39, McCutcheon has been writing since his teen-age years. He started with science fiction in high school and has tried virtually every genre since then, including fiction, children’s books and screenplays. Primarily a free-lancer, the father of two has worked at home for the past seven years.

The author says that anyone can learn to write nonfiction, but he’s not so sure about fiction. That’s only one of the reasons McCutcheon has come to specialize in reference books such as the Superthesaurus.

The other is cash.

“I struggled so much with writing and not making enough to make ends meet. I got sick of it,” he says. “I chose reference books because they stay in print a long time.”

His continuing affair with reference books began when he heard that a dictionary selling 170,000 hardcover copies per year netted its author two dollars a copy. McCutcheon figured that was a gig even the noblest writer could dig.

His first book, “Compass in Your Nose & Other Astonishing Facts About Humans,” was published in 1989. While he hated the title, it was no big skin off his nose, for the book of trivia on the human body reached No. 5 on the Book-of-the-Month Club’s summer 1990 best-seller list and was serialized in Cosmopolitan, USA Today and other publications.

Then, one night, while McCutcheon was at work at the homeless shelter, he heard Johnny Carson mention the book on “The Tonight Show.” Pretty heady stuff for a newly published author.

The author’s second book of the reference ilk, Descriptionary: For When You Know What It Is, But Not What It’s Called, was published in 1992. The volume was chosen as a featured selection by the Book-of-the-Month Club and Writer’s Digest Book Club.

Then came two books about writing, followed by his first children’s book, “Grandfather’s Christmas Camp” in 1995, which got good reviews from the likes of Publisher’s Weekly.

Noting his previous success, Writer’s Digest hired McCutcheon for the Superthesaurus. The first edition was published in 1995 and the next is due in January.

The first edition billed itself as the be-all, end-all of the genre. Language columnist Richard Lederer extolled the book, calling the author the “legitimate son of Peter Mark Roget and Noah Webster.”

Paradoxically, those lexicographic luminaries’ names no longer mean much when attached to contemporary reference books. Having entered the public domain since their namesakes’ deaths, the names “Roget” and “Webster” are up for grabs. Any publisher can use the names to enhance the appeal of their product, and many have, says McCutcheon.

Nonetheless, McCutcheon devoted a year to making his compilation, well, super, particularly for other writers.

The book offers synonyms, antonyms, examples of usage and occasional over-the-top listings, such as that presented under “liqueur.” The entry lists 21 liqueurs, along with their ingredients and, in some cases, nation of origin.

A “word-find reverse dictionary” feature aims to help those suffering from “lethologica,” which McCutcheon defines as the inability to recall a word on the tip of one’s tongue. Left to fester, the condition can worsen into “loganamnosis,” the obsession to come up with the blasted word.

When McCutcheon works on a thesaurus or dictionary, he sets up his desk in a horseshoe configuration, with a “gazillion” reference books spread before him. He reckons he owns 90 dictionaries, including guides to law, ballet and sports terms, and he even keeps a file of new words he learns.

To compile an entry for a given word, McCutcheon gleans what he sees as the best choices from existing sources, sometimes consulting with experts for ideas or additions.

For instance, for help defining “moon,” he contacted astronomers. In addition to lunar terms, “drop one’s drawers” and “daydream” were among the synonyms.

You’d think 600 pages of words is extensive enough, already. Yet the author expects the book’s next edition will be even longer. “Every thesaurus out there says it’s the most comprehensive, but you could make it five times as long,” says McCutcheon.

The author agrees there’s sizable irony behind a “yup-and-nope” guy such as himself making his living with words.

“I was flunking everything in high school,” he says. “The only thing that interested me was English class. … But as soon as I got out of school, everything really interested me. I lived at the library.”

McCutcheon left South Portland High School his senior year to play in a band, a move he now refers to as a “typical dumdum adolescent idea.” He later got his G.E.D.

Before long, he had started his actual writing career by writing for Omni and Science Digest. He got on the mailing lists of more than 50 universities, rewriting stories on their scientific research projects in layman’s terms for the science magazines.

Over the years, McCutcheon played drums in various rock bands a couple of nights a week and worked at the homeless shelter before devoting himself full-time to writing. Now, most of his waking hours — which are many — are devoted to conceiving and completing nearly innumerable writing ventures.

“I’m a horrible insomniac,” he says. “I lay there thinking of projects.”

Sometimes fatherhood proves distracting when his young children, Kara and Matthew, demand his attention. He stays home while his wife Deanna is away working at Maine Medical Center in Portland as a labor and delivery nurse.

McCutcheon’s currently chipping away at about 10 projects, including children’s and reference books and his first novel. “I’m not enjoying it,” he says of the latter, calling it “totally painful.”

Trying to sell the three screenplays he’s written has proved “pretty much a disaster. I can’t even get the time of day from anyone in Hollywood. You really have to be out there and hobnob.”

In one of the screenplays, “Return of the Three Stooges,” the hapless threesome goes afer a band of drug smugglers, says McCutcheon, leaving the rest to the imagination. Apparently Hollywood can not quite envision it, having made no offer on the property as yet.

At this point, McCutcheon is more than acquainted with rejection.

“When I was younger, and I got a review that wasn’t so hot, I’d get really pissed off. … Now I try to learn from it,” he says, espousing the eminently practical attitudes he brings to the business.

“What’ll get you in the door is just hard work, period. My first book was rejected 17 times. Then Putnam bought it, and sold 300,000 copies,” he says. The early going with his Descriptionary was even tougher. It was rejected 22 times before finding a friendly publisher.

So it goes in the rough-and-tumble world of publishing. “I always want other writers to know that two or three rejections isn’t anything,” says McCutcheon.

An agent is trying to sell his proposal for a Webster’s Super Dictionary, a project he half dreads since it would take four years and a million words. Yet the beauty of dictionaries is, once you’ve done one, “you’d never have to work again,” says the author.

A new revised edition of the Superthesaurus is coming out in January. But be forewarned — the revision will be a “cleaned up” version, bowing to the demand for a one-size-fits-all edition suitable for America’s impressionable youth.

“This book has a reputation as being a little nastier than the rest,” McCutcheon says of the current edition, which includes most or all of what comic George Carlin has described as the seven dirty words.

In fact, a review by the Los Angeles Times called McCutcheon the “nearest thing to a thesaurus pornographer,” apparently meant as a compliment.

“They thought it was good because this is how language is,” says McCutcheon. But these days, “anything past `hell’ and `damn,’ and you’ve got trouble from the editor.”

Editors aside, the author seems content with his lot and firmly rooted in the `burbs of South Portland. “I love Maine and I would never leave,” he says. “Hollywood could pay me 10 million bucks, and I wouldn’t move.”

Asked just how good a living he makes in a given year, McCutcheon reverts to yup-nope mode: “It’s solid. It’s good enough,” he says. “It’s good enough for me.”