Miranda Phipps

Miss P has a reading problem.  Namely, she doesn’t like to read.

This greatly distresses her Mama, a veritable reading freak. 

Luckily, Miss P has an excellent first grade teacher who recommended books on CD!  (Part of our theory is that Miss P likes to be Very Good at the things she does, and so she abandons reading whenever it begins to feel daunting.  Reading the book along with the CD helps her to get through those tough words that would otherwise hang her up.)

This recommendation has been sheer genius–not just because Miss P now likes to read, but because it has brought about an introduction to Skippyjon Jones, the Siamese cat who thinks he’s a chihuahua.  Yes, really.

Judy Schachner’s Skippjon books are just fantastic, and her readings are excellent.  (They rival Neil Gaiman’s recordings in my mind.)

Her love of (and dexterity with) wordplay and rhythm are really exceptional, and I would recommend checking these out if there are any little people in your life.  She’s also, and this part really makes me jealous, a brilliant illustrator.

I’ve been saving the best for last in this little blog post and that is an excerpt from the book.  Don’t you just love these opening lines?  (BTW, the reference to “box” is a reference to Skippyjon’s litter box.)

Skippyjon Jones did his very best thinking outside the box.  And this twisted his mamma’s whiskers tighter than a Texas tornado.

Enjoy!

Twitter is its own wonderful mini-rabbit hole in the realm of the internet.  You learn so many incredible things by following a diversity of people on there.

I can’t quite remember how I ended up following the British Library sound archives on Twitter, but I did, and they tweet so many interesting things there.  As a bit of a research boondoggle this morning, I poked around the actual website of the archive and came across this map:

http://sounds.bl.uk/maps/Accents-and-dialects.html

By clicking on the little red pins, you can listen to dialect from anywhere in England.  I was listening to an older gentleman from Pontefract, Yorkshire talk about the mining industry there, and it was like listening to my much-missed Grandpa!  It made me all teary and everything.

Still, it doesn’t compare to listening to Peter Sellers wander through English accents in this short bit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLsVh6Qrpew

It always amazes me, watching that promotional piece from Dr. Strangelove.

Offf to write!

“Now I know why women wear such large panniers,” she said.

“To repel their admirers?”

“Precisely . . . .”

I tend to write the same sentence patterns again and again.  I bore myself, and I (will) inevitably bore readers if I keep this up.

Having just turned 37 a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been in sort of an improving state of mind, so I treated myself to a CD course available through the Teaching Company:  “Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writers Craft” taught by Professor Brooks Langdon of the University of Iowa.  (The Teaching Company has a vast catalogue of courses available in all kinds of academic areas.   Nirvana for my inner geek.  I’m now saving up for one covering the history of the Victorian period.)

I’m a few lectures in and, so far, it’s great.  Professor Langdon’s approach is very academic, but I love the analytical bent because it gives me a framework to evaluate my own sentences.  But I have to say that the most meaningful part so far is his observation that we should “think of a sentence as being a visible piece of writing and the propositions it advances as assumptions and ideas not necessarily written out.”  And, as a further explanation of this point, he states that “[t]he basic unit of writing sentences is the proposition, not the word or even sequence of words.”

This concept that the proposition, i.e., the purpose or idea of the sentence, may be unwritten amazed me.  It’s quite obvious when you think about it, but it’s absolutely true that the unstated propositions are everywhere and that sequencing and word choice give you the ability to manipulate and modify these unstated propositions. 

My takeway from all this is that you have to be aware of the unstated portion of your sentence in order to really be in control of it.  I believe that the proposition is in many cases subconsious, which is why I know a particular sentence just sounds “right.”  But in circumstances where the sentence keeps slipping and sliding away from me, it may be valuable for me to hone in on the unstated proposition and tease out the layer beneath the words.

More on Brooks Langdon anon.

Came home  last night from RWA with a remarkable clarity of mind around the direction I want to go this year.  I definitely experienced my usual round of conference angst and the wish that this past year had been more productive, but Nationals also always allows my to see my priorities more clearly.  Every year I experience a muddying and obscuring of my goals over time.  The conference–this year especially–allows all that silt to precipitate away to the bottom, and I can once again see where I want to go.

The takeaway?  One cannot raise two small people, work a day job that demands all of one’s mental energy and write a book.  Perhaps if my day-job were less mentally encroaching, my routine of getting up in the wee hours would be do-able, but that is not my reality.  I must credit this realization in no small part to a conversation I had with Joanna Bourne at the booksigning.  (Thank you, Joanna, and congratulation on the very well-deserved RITA!)  It’s such an obvious truth that all of my best mental energy is poured into professional demands and not the writing.  Now I see it. 

I wish I could say the same for our poor betta fish, Miss Flitter Silver-Mist Phipps, whose tank is a nasty murk.  Cleaning the fishtank was NOT a priority for the DH during my absence, so  I’m to share some of my clear-sightedness with dear Flitter.

I’ve been tinkering here with the website and my twitter settings to see if I can integrate things a bit.  Apologies to all five of my Twitter followers for spamming you!

My posting here should (in theory) translate into a little message over on Twitter noting that I’ve posted a new blog.  Wish me luck.

In more exciting news, I informed my DH that I was taking much of the day to work on (1) mirandaphipps.com (including, I hope, a snazzy update of the header image), (2) writing, and (3) a bit of RWA packing and other prep.  It’s like a little spa day for my writing life.  Whee!

So it’s been about a month of insanity, but I emerged from the chaos late yesterday afternoon and found a couple of hours today in which I could finally sit down and figure out Twitter.  I now understand the hoopla.  I’m still trying to figure out the best way to post a picture.

In other news, I inhaled the new Loretta Chase: Don’t Tempt Me. 

Who cannot but love a heroine who has been a harem girl?  And here is my favorite laugh-out-loud bit (one among many laugh-out-loud bits, so it was difficult to choose):

Zoe went on determinedly, “Yusri Pasha gave me as second wife to Karim, who was his eldest son by his first wife.  But Karim could not make his . . . his . . . “–though Marchmont kept his eyes half closed, she knew the Duke regarded her intently–”his instrument of delight.  The limb a man uses for pleasure and to make children.  What is it called?”

Shrieks from the sisters.

Zoe ignored them.  “No one will ever tell me what it is in English,” she said.  “If I ever learned the word, I have forgotten it.” 

He made an odd sound in his throat.  Then he siad, “Membrum virile will do.”

And in addition to being funny, Chase is quite brilliant at describing how Marchmont has only been halfway seeing anything in life for the past decade–an insight not only into Marchmont’s character flaw, but something that ties into the external plot later on in the novel.

I just bought my plane ticket last night, and I’m trying out a bit of a new format on the timing front.  I’m going to come in on Tuesday and then leave on Saturday before the RITAs.  So, I have four nights, but I’m sort of buying myself an extra full day during the week.  I particularly wanted to join the Beau Monde’s field trip on Wednesday:

http://www.thebeaumonde.com/conference/

I’m also going to be attending the book signing and playing gofer for the authors signing.  I’m also going to shepherd folks into meetings with editors on Thursday and Friday afternoon.  While there are a few workshops I’m interested in attending, I’m hoping to turn this year’s RWA into more of a social/networking event.

I’m trying to keep my pinky toe in the writing world.  It’s been tough the past few weeks due to work becoming busier again.  (Usually there’s a bit of whining from me when there are more hours than I want, but not these days with many employers letting people go.  I’m glad to be earning my keep–and my weekly paycheck–so I find myself saying yes ma’am, I’ll certainly take that project.)

I did manage to inhale Elizabeth Hoyt’s latest:  To Beguile a Beast.  The bits told in Abby’s point of view were especially well done, I thought. 

I never quite got used to the hero’s singular “eye” looking at the heroine.  Completely accurate of course and very much a product of my own, difficult to break, readerly assumptions.

A lovely cover, too.  Hoyt’s really been lucky in her past few covers–great art and delectable colors.  Some people get worked up about the whole half head thing, but I far prefer to see a victim of the art department’s guillotine than some raggedy mulleted professional wrestler type.

I also dove into Teresa Medeiros latest release.   (Target had so many of my favorite authors at 25% off!  Woot!) 

I somehow missed her last historical (Some Like it Wicked), so my most recent experience with her writing was her venture into vampire-land.  Those were much darker books, and it was fun to be lightly delighted by Medeiros again.  This reminds me that I must now go back and read those vampire books having watched Buffy.  I have a feeling that Adrian (was Adrian the vampire broher?–I think so) may bear some resemblance to Spike, and I’d love to see Spike gain his HEA if only vicariously.

In terms of my own writing, Margie Lawson’s keeping me busy with her many rhetorical devices.  My reward?  Understanding what Neil Gaiman meant when he referred to lilotes in his journal the other day.  Miranda scores!  Now just to use it in my own writing.

I went to an advanced WordPress class  today–even took the whole day off of work to do it.  (Go Miranda!)  I managed to understand why I have had both a “Home” and “Scribblings” page forever.  I’m still not quite sure how to address some of the things I want to do with sidebars, but having a stronger conceptual sense of how Wordpress works gives me a much clearer idea of how to tackle that one.