Rambles
I gave up Yohoho Puzzle Pirates only to discover the pleasures of Youtube (I'm particularly fond of the diet coke/mentos series, and have the song stuck in my head... sad). Cheaper, shorter, and less bandwidth than the TV shows, although I love "Sam Who", a sitcom about a woman dealing with amnesia after an eight day coma, from (here's where they hooked me...) a head injury. She discovers in trying to recover her memory that her former self was a real.... well, you know. Very, very funny.
I pulled an all-nighter reading "The Memory Keeper's Daughter" ~ excellent story, albeit the kind which I suspect holds more meaning to those of us who've graced the planet at least long enough to see a younger generation, especially our offspring, up and grown. The story begins in 1964 when a doctor's wife gives birth, unexpectedly, to twins. The second child has Down Syndrome, and, with his wife still sedated, the doctor rashly hands off the girl to his nurse to take to a distant institution. He tells his wife the girl died; the nurse can't bear to leave the baby at the institute, and instead leaves the state to secretly raise it as her own. Exceptionally well-told, with nuances I felt only the twinned patinas of parenthood and tragedy experienced could best reveal. Or... maybe I'm projecting. Either way, it's a two hanky chick book that guys should read too.
Next up is "Sacred Time" by Ursula Hegi. I only picked it up because she'd written "Stones in the River," and I only picked that up because it was quoted in "Writing a Breakout Novel," and I only picked that up because I want to write novels, and if I'm going to invest that kind of time and effort in writing, I want it to be a Damn Good Bestselling Novel. I may never publish (bleah), but the effort has certainly been satisfying so far. My husband thinks I should try to get my essays published, but (it seems) to me that market is so crammed I wouldn't have a prayer of getting published. As to publication, ego-gratifying though it would be, it's the idea of actually getting paid for something I like. (Thank you Mrs. Payne and Mrs. Augustine, and every teacher who ever despaired on learning I would be their student!)
I hated writing when I was young. Despised it with a passion. Parts of speech were troublesome to identify, especially when I realized I didn't actually need to know what they were called in order to use them correctly; I had the same problem with the fundamental laws of mathematics (commutitive, associative, distributive) for the same reason; ironically (perversely?) I trained to be a teacher. Frankly, at the time, I didn't give a rat's flip about the nuances of the underlying rules (Hey, seventh grade!) and developed a certain perverse pride in the number of times I flunked social studies as well. I didn't know back then it wasn't a good thing if the principal knew you by name and on sight...
My third shot at English 101 in college was when writing seriously jelled for me. The afforemented souls had instilled good mechanics in me while I wasn't looking, and my summer school professor raved about the quality of the tripe I churned out. To this day I don't know if he simply had lowered his expectations (it was summer school after all), or if I really was that good. All I know is it gave me the shot of confidence I needed to stay with it and get better at it. It certainly helped that all the essays had to be written in class; I was a terrible procrastinator on written work, thus the two previous failures. The ten-page paper (an out of class project) was delivered to my teacher late, at his home, and I felt terribly guilty for leaving gas in his driveway with my big blue clunker- named Agatha Christie, since it was a mystery how she'd run.
Not long after that, personal computers took the drudgery out of writing, and eventually I churned out 100 pages of the sort of drivel that was only meant to teach me something (other than keyboarding skills).
With respect to writing though, I think that I will forever remain most impressed with my brother Eric, who had over 1 million meg of prose on his computer- all written by him. Wow.
I pulled an all-nighter reading "The Memory Keeper's Daughter" ~ excellent story, albeit the kind which I suspect holds more meaning to those of us who've graced the planet at least long enough to see a younger generation, especially our offspring, up and grown. The story begins in 1964 when a doctor's wife gives birth, unexpectedly, to twins. The second child has Down Syndrome, and, with his wife still sedated, the doctor rashly hands off the girl to his nurse to take to a distant institution. He tells his wife the girl died; the nurse can't bear to leave the baby at the institute, and instead leaves the state to secretly raise it as her own. Exceptionally well-told, with nuances I felt only the twinned patinas of parenthood and tragedy experienced could best reveal. Or... maybe I'm projecting. Either way, it's a two hanky chick book that guys should read too.
Next up is "Sacred Time" by Ursula Hegi. I only picked it up because she'd written "Stones in the River," and I only picked that up because it was quoted in "Writing a Breakout Novel," and I only picked that up because I want to write novels, and if I'm going to invest that kind of time and effort in writing, I want it to be a Damn Good Bestselling Novel. I may never publish (bleah), but the effort has certainly been satisfying so far. My husband thinks I should try to get my essays published, but (it seems) to me that market is so crammed I wouldn't have a prayer of getting published. As to publication, ego-gratifying though it would be, it's the idea of actually getting paid for something I like. (Thank you Mrs. Payne and Mrs. Augustine, and every teacher who ever despaired on learning I would be their student!)
I hated writing when I was young. Despised it with a passion. Parts of speech were troublesome to identify, especially when I realized I didn't actually need to know what they were called in order to use them correctly; I had the same problem with the fundamental laws of mathematics (commutitive, associative, distributive) for the same reason; ironically (perversely?) I trained to be a teacher. Frankly, at the time, I didn't give a rat's flip about the nuances of the underlying rules (Hey, seventh grade!) and developed a certain perverse pride in the number of times I flunked social studies as well. I didn't know back then it wasn't a good thing if the principal knew you by name and on sight...
My third shot at English 101 in college was when writing seriously jelled for me. The afforemented souls had instilled good mechanics in me while I wasn't looking, and my summer school professor raved about the quality of the tripe I churned out. To this day I don't know if he simply had lowered his expectations (it was summer school after all), or if I really was that good. All I know is it gave me the shot of confidence I needed to stay with it and get better at it. It certainly helped that all the essays had to be written in class; I was a terrible procrastinator on written work, thus the two previous failures. The ten-page paper (an out of class project) was delivered to my teacher late, at his home, and I felt terribly guilty for leaving gas in his driveway with my big blue clunker- named Agatha Christie, since it was a mystery how she'd run.
Not long after that, personal computers took the drudgery out of writing, and eventually I churned out 100 pages of the sort of drivel that was only meant to teach me something (other than keyboarding skills).
With respect to writing though, I think that I will forever remain most impressed with my brother Eric, who had over 1 million meg of prose on his computer- all written by him. Wow.