🙂 Daily Quordle 1284
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Latest love: macros for editing. When I delve into them, I realize how fun and powerful they are. They're not anything authors and writers need to know about, but they sure make editing quicker and more effective. It's the tech side of the career I love.
Ordinarily, under a sane administration, I'd say this is such a blatant Fourth Amendment infringement that any claim to the contrary would be blasted out of court without further consideration.
Acquaintance: It is a truth universally acknowledged that I HATE HATE HATE Jane Austen.
Me: I cannot fathom your love of Joan Didion...that self-absorbed name-dropping recorder of SoCal minutiae and ephemera...wait. I see a parallel between the two. But not enough to entice me.
#mutualcurmudgeons
Currently amusing myself with the thought that as a health nonfiction narrator, I could theoretically narrate books by my namesake, a successful endocrinologist in Atlanta. Not narrated yet, so this could be fun! I would tag Dr. Isaacs if he were here...so maybe I'll take this to FB.
One of the biggest things I learned from my high school English classes is this: classic American literature was almost exclusively depressing. Damn puritanical influence. Classic English/British literature? So much more lighthearted and amusing. All the satire. (Of course, feel free to comment.)
Prepping the pronunciation of the seven fictional French short story titles on the first page took longer than prepping the rest of the story! 🙄 All written by "M. de l'Aubepine"...whose name in French translates to "Hawthorne." (The short story titles are his, too.) No idea why he did this.
Prepping "Rappaccini's Daughter" for narration to keep myself in practice. Glad I watched Amadeus yesterday...F. Murray Abraham will be one of the characters! Also, I still look askance at Hawthorne here. He has yet to get into my good graces. Why? --->
Meh. Let him follow. Maybe something else about you he likes. Besides, you don't have to follow back.
Yes. Decided. If I'm not being hired on for narration jobs (yet), I can at least go through the motions of preparing, narrating, and recording this story as if it were a real job. Besides, I'm feeling a bit rusty, and this story flowed for me.
Will do this once I'm back in the home studio next week.
“A whole lot of people are wandering around in hospital gowns with their butts out, patootie to the wind.”
--Jill Lepore, “The Editorial Battles That Made The New Yorker”
(3/3)
“Editing...is a dying art....In an age of tweets and TikToks and Substack posts and chatty podcasts, a vanishingly small percentage of the crushingly vast amount that is published on any given day has been edited, by anyone...
(2/3)
Past New Yorker senior editor John Bennet: “A writer is a guy in the hospital wearing one of those gowns that’s open in the back” was another of Bennet’s aphorisms. “An editor is walking behind, making sure that nobody can see his ass.”
(1/3)
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
Wow! So many recommendations! Thank you so much! I'm already enjoying exploring them...and this is on top of the 4 basic herbal teas I have, the sample pack that's arriving from Yunnan Sourcing next week, and much more. It's a fun pursuit.
I don't mind a good roast. I really enjoy roasted barley tea. A wonderful way to end a long day.
The company is Yamamotoyama. Maybe I'm associating fishy with umami like with seaweed. It's not necessarily a deal-killer, but I'm definitely open to exploring other hojicha that may be better.
Um...? I want to try some good hojicha sooner than that. I don't want to have to wait a few years. It's not the roasted character that I object to...it tastes and smells a bit fishy, which seems sadly common with certain teas (pu'erh comes to mind).
#Tea aficionado here. I just discovered #hojicha today. Roasted green tea that—hooray!—has a very low caffeine content: less than 10 mg/cup. Very happy about this. Now...to find a hojicha that I find palatable. The one I have now is...um...a start. But at least I can get my afternoon #theanine.
Listening to audiobooks for edification inevitably involves listening to narrators whose performance you may not enjoy. And narration *is* a performance. It's also instructive. If a narrator is boring me, I'd better strive to be better than what I'm listening to. (Especially true for NF.)
“There’s no such thing as good writing. There’s only good rewriting.” — Louis Brandeis
There's a certain liberation in that sentiment. Don't worry about getting your writing right the first time around. Let it go. Just get your words down. Refinement can come later.
#editing #rewriting #writing
I just finished reading "Rappaccini's Daughter" aloud, narrating to the air around me. That was a fun read —a far cry from the narcotic qualities of The Scarlet Letter. (My 15-year-old self would be aghast that I like this story now.) Maybe I should consider recording this story for fun.
#narration
Just saw this commercial tonight. Ontario is pulling no punches, but nor is it being confrontational. Very impressive move on Canada's part.
I love #tea. I received a wonderful sample pack from Yunnan Sourcing as a Christmas gift last year, and was planning to order some more soon. It looks like that's not possible now. No, I did not vote for this. No shipping to the US until further notice. #tariff #tradewar #china
I had to read a plot analysis afterward to really ensure I understood what had happened...and nope, a lot had escaped me. (I'd be a terrible spy. Nuance in conversation so often escapes me.) Anyhow...onward to more books! (4/4)
And last: Mr. Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood. A timely read about the mercurial political situation in Berlin in the 1930s and how a young English man gets caught up in it. A bit hard to follow; the mincing, effete title character is more concerned with manners than actions. (3/4)
Next: a short YA graphic novel, Flamer, by Mike Curato. A quick coming-out story taking place at a Boy Scout camp in the mid '90s. I hope some questioning kids get their hands on this one. It's compassionate and deeply felt. Artwork like Diary of a Wimpy Kid – slapdash and endearing. (2/4)
Three days, three books finished. (Not started and finished, but.) First up: Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements. I've skeeted about this before. Great narration job. Difficult story I'm happy to be done with. I want a happy book as a palate cleanser. (1/4)
Library card procured for the Palm Springs Public Library. Then it occurred to me: I have yet to read a single book by John Irving. This will be rectified presently. Also picked up Breakfast at Tiffany's.
What I wished I could be, once upon a time: a writer or humorist with the wit and cultural savoir faire of Hugh Gallagher circa "College Essay" or Rich Juzwiak circa fourfour.
Coming to terms with your métier is also admirable. Doesn't mean you're a man manqué or some other apropos French term.