Posted on 03/23/2007 11:44:31 AM PDT by Eleutheria5
I mean, hit ‘post reply’ and then type in all the names and hit ‘send’.
You are talking about typing all the names in the To-dialogue box? Anyway, I will keep this up, but doubt I can keep it at the fast pace you guys set, seeing as my life is very hectic. But this must be kept going.
Yes, in the To dialogue box. Use a semi-colon in between each screen name. I pinged them all last time and got no repsonse but keep trying.
Here we go. My very first ever pinging. I apologize if I cannot post here every day, because I don’t even have access to a computer on a daily basis, and hope to very soon have a wireless connection with which to remedy that situation.
I don’t know how to do that giant knot thing that Squarebarb used to put up on the ping post of that day. Perhaps I’ll learn soon.
Anyway, let’s get on to a new topic, heroes and heroic animals having played themselves out. How about Children’s writing? I have become very aware of this lately, since my four-year-old has just discovered Dr. Seuss.
He was, it seems, a bit of a lefty, as evidenced by The Butter War, a parody of the Cold War, and Sneeches on Beaches, a very simplistic tale about race relations. The starbelly sneeches will not accept the plain belly sneeches, who have no culture or life of their own, but only sitting around wishing their bellies had stars. Speaking as a member of a “historically excluded group,” Orthodox Jews, I can testify that this is pure crap. We plain belly sneeches could give a rat’s ass if the local country club declines our membership. We have our own richcultural identity and life. So do blacks. So do Hispanics. So do Armenians and Kurds. But that’s neither here nor there. My point is, Seuss is left of center.
But in terms of writing quality, his books are da bomb. I love the pictures. I love the anapest meter. I love the way he draws children’s imagination into new realms. I love the way adults don’t get fed up with readings his books fifty times to a toddler. My son concurs.
This itself touches a topic for another day, lefty writers who are too good to put down despite their leanings. My favorite is EL Doktorow, although I’m far from well-versed with his work.
But back to Dr. Seuss/PD Eastman. He’s a hard act to follow; the Hemingway or Conrad of kiddy lit. You can’t immitate him. It’s hard to improve on him. The lefty stuff can be avoided in favorite of the classics: Cat in the Hat, Horton Hatches an Egg, Yertel the Turtle, etc. Is it possible to do righty children’s literature the way he did lefty? Inquiring minds would like to know your thoughts.
I think it could be done just as well as Dr. Seuss if you have that kind of talent.
The key is to be sneaky, I think, until you’re an institution like Dr. Seuss became. He made his publishers money, had a wide readership to whom he was as much a fixture as the Bible, and then he decided he could risk some blatantly political stuff. Chronology of publications will probably bear this out, but I haven’t studied it. Just idle pontification by yours truly.
So here’s an experiment, in case we ever get as established as Dr. Seuss in kiddy lit: Let’s write a rhyming kiddy book exposing fake moral equivalencies in the Palestinial/Israeli conflict. Heheheh.
Mother UN had two bad sons who constantly were fighting
The first bad son had a garden plot where oranges grew and flowers, too
The second one would cry “No fair! He stole from me!” to Mother UN
And threw rocks and stones at the first bad son, who bled from his head.
He’d work that plot, whether stolen or not, though Mother UN would scold and fume
While the flowers bloomed, and the oranges ripened into gold.
Someone continue, please
I can’t continue the poem but observations on Dr. Seuss -— he was wonderful. And I loved the drawings.
Children’s books need striking characters, plain and straightforward charcter types.
The greedy one, the reasonable one and so on.
And kids love animals.
I’m having trouble catching the meter ... the rhythm escapes me, but then I’m not a poet.
It’s a bit more fast and loose than most kids could follow, too. There is a meter, but not an easy one. Seuss I ain’t.
I’ve just discovered that my long-time friend and correspondent Bryan Thao Worra is a truly gifted poet, as well as a right-of-center immigrant from Laos. If you wish to read his new book, On The Other Side of the Eye, check out http://members.aol.com/thaoworra/. Here is an excerpt:
WHAT KILLS A MAN
Always small things:
A round.
Holes.
Fumes.
Edges.
Split atoms.
A second.
A footstep.
A sip. A bite. A word. A cell.
A motion. An emotion. A dream.
A fool.
A bit of salt. A drop. A gramgent.
The true root of arguments.
What kills a man is mysterious
Only in how minute the culprit behind the blow.
We’re careless, and forget:
Even when what kills a man
Is another man,
It is a small thing that kills a man,
The whole earth a single grain
On a sprawling table filled with the smallest things.
I just started a forum for conservative fiction writers to share ideas, tips, critiques and posting stories or excerpts from stories.
http://libertyfic.proboards.com
http//libertyfic.proboards.com
libertyfic.proboards.com
Please add me to the list.
Does it have to be fiction?
I read a lot of Dickens (and homeschool my sons with it) and I never noticed that before. Description by movement. It IS fascinating.
Question for ya: if someone posts a piece of fiction on the web, isn’t it then in the public and can be ‘borrowed’ without attribution? ... I ask because I had a story posted through RJayneJ for a freerepublic fundraiser and a writer for Law & Order: SVU used it, with minor modification, for a story aired on that show. I was never asked for permission or given any attribution.
excellent question. I would not post stories that I wanted to try and sell someday. On the other hand there are a lot of copyrighted articles online that you aren’t legally supposed to copy.But since we can’t afford lawyers...
I did make the ‘story board’ section only visible to members and I have only posted excerpts so far. It being less than a day old, thats not saying much.
I want my site to be a place where conservative fiction writers can help each other out. I definitely need some members who could drop by once in a while.
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