Vocabulary: 'Conflating'

I was just reading  Helen and Sharon this morning—I know, I'm weird that way—and came to a paragraph where Helen tells James that Megan is his 'sister', (in this story, he's only three) but he contradicts his mother, and says no, Allie is his sister.  Helen thinks: man, I screwed that one up; clearly James was conflating sister and girl.

Conflation is an interesting and useful idea.  When someone conflates two words—like 'sister' and 'girl', as James might be doing—it's a lot like confusing the two words: sometimes the two words do mean the same thing, but the two words usually are intended to mean different things.  

Fiction with a Moral

I was recently reading the biographies of numerous authors; some of then wrote about the lives of farmers, especially women.   Some of them wrote about women who fought for the vote for women.  Some of them wrote about the lives of slaves.  Some of them wrote about exceptional women who educated themselves, and then taught children.

In all the books I've written, the hero is just a woman, who tries to make life more fun and interesting for the people around her, and for herself.  There is very little service aspect in what she tries to do; so it's never going to be great literature!

Oh well; them's the breaks.

Kay