Paca's Voice Thingy

This time, my kitchen is hosting the reading for me. Pull up a chair, please, and have a listen to a story about a girl's Aunt Sylvie, in one of her nicer moments.

Happy New Year

Indefinite hiatus hereby ensuing on this blog. (Heh. Sounds like a partial reading from the end of the minutes to some lawyer-y get-together.)

I'm thinking about how to use this place moving forward, because I like it here. It's comfortable. But it's also time-consumptive when I 'do right by it', and I just don't have that kind of time right now.

Happy New Year, and here's to us all getting to our goals.

Merry Christmas

I won't be around much for the next couple of days, but I've got a nice group present for you here, courtesy (again) of The Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/dec/17/second-thought-rewriting-al-kennedy

I screwed up the link (as per usual) but if you have the time, please go to Guardian.co.uk and go to the Books blog. It's an Al Kennedy post - a wonderful, thoughtful piece on rewriting, complete with a photograph of an editing-in-progress page from James Joyce's handwritten manuscript for Ulysses. Makes you almost relish the precision act of editing.

Hope you all have wonderful holidays!

Editing Orgasms (No, not that kind)

OK. Hell. I started a sentence six ways from Sunday just now, editing myself, so there ARE some times when editing is simply putting up a false front, right? Instead of saying what you want to actually want to say.

So here goes...yesterday I had a brain orgasm, editing the beginning paragraph to a scene that was workmanlike, acceptable, but no great shakes. It took me a while, I don't know, I kept coming back to it, maybe a couple of hours altogether, to get the words I wanted to, replacing the 'marker' words I had written initially to describe a scene in a way that engendered mood without making it obvious.

Damn, I love it when this happens.

How about you? We all talk about the slog parts, but have you had your important writing brain orgasm lately? (I'd love to say this comes in a daily dose, but for me, it doesn't. Mostly right now, I'm slogging.)

Robin Jr. Rocks. I'm Just Sayin'...

Robin Jr. is in her Illustration BA program, and I had the chance to take a look at a few of the pieces she's done. Thought you all might wanna see them as well.

She drew the one below to illustrate an article on the Roman Catholic Church and its infamous shenanigans...



And she drew this one...



...to accompany an article on the often unhealthy relationship between big business and universities. Not that accepting badly needed monies is bad, per se, but the freedom of thinking, or lack thereof, is a concern, when money's mixed in, whatever the venue or topic at hand.

And, proud mom that I am, I gotta show ya a pic of my baby girl, Robin Jr as she...



is dressed up a bit like her boyfriend, Tom (who I'm gonna be meeting for the first time in December, God love his heart).

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, you all, wherever you are!

I'm still very much up for Skype-fest trying, but can't until my elderly relative has gone home after the holiday.