Johnny Depp dances a hornpipe for me.

You know what I love? [besides an excuse for a johnny depp pic?]

I love when wasting time surfing the internet reading an article on something totally unrelated to anything I’m writing about turns into Johnny Depp info I desperately need for my writing!

This is why anything you read, anything you watch, anything you hear, is research. You never know where inspiration will come from. You never know where material will come from.

You never know.

So when i09 set out to debunk everything we know about pirate talk and instead gave me new info on how the people of the West Country spoke, I danced a hornpipe.

Newton based his pirate talk in the film on the dialect of his native West Country in southwestern England, which just happened to be where Long John Silver hailed from in the Treasure Island novel.

In the English West Country during early 20th century, “‘arr’ was an affirmation, not unlike the Canadian ‘eh,’ and maritime expressions were a part of everyday speech,” [Woodard] said.

West Country! Cornwall! Yay!

And more where that came from.

And just for fun… Bugger! I tried to post a youtube hornpipe but it wouldn’t post. Oh well, click here to see it.

And to bring this full circle, more Johnny Depp as a pirate (you’ll have to imagine the hornpipe).

In which I take a very brief detour.

Instead of my more typical reads, my most recent dip into things word-ish is actually award-winning litrachure.

Here is what I said on goodreads about it.

A Visit from the Goon Squadby Jennifer Egan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

All I knew was that this was the rock-and-roll-American-Culture-post-Baby-Boomer book that won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and that intrigued me, but not enough to actually make a priority of reading it.

And then… I did.

I love gimmicks when they work. This collection of tangentially related short stories has a gimmick that works brilliantly–but don’t go looking for it, because it won’t work or even make sense out of context. It also made it difficult to read on my Kindle, but if it hadn’t be so easily available on my Kindle, I wouldn’t have gone out of my way to read it, so there ya go.

Finally, when trying to decide how many stars to give it I decided on four because–I recognize why it won the award and I have no quibbles about that at all. But in the final analysis I won’t be buying this book in hardcover just to “possess” it, so from my personal pov, it’s a really good book and I’m glad I read it, but it’s not one I cherish.

Let me know what you think.

View all my reviews

One more thought that I may add to the goodreads review–it’s hard for me to imagine this working as an audiobook because each short story is about a different character with very distinctive styles and voices.  And I do think it would read best as a real book because of the one chapter I mentioned.  I could read it on the Kindle but I’m thinking a lot of people might not be able to.  Maybe people with other ereaders would have different reactions.

 

the blog that posts johnny depp pics whether they fit the subject or not

Newsflash! I have found my brand.

There’s a bit of a feeling of, “Blogs, so last decade,” because everything has moved to facebook, twitter, tumblr, etc. And yet, there are still blogs, and writers are still being pushed to create blogs, post new content to blogs, have blogs be “about” something, create a brand, a platform.

Because, you know, writers are like Febreeze or Charmin. We need to sell ourselves.

One thing I notice–new writers always blog about writing. They give writing advice. They post agent interviews. It’s all about writing. And I’m not so sure that potential readers want to read about writing.

Does it invoke confidence amongst nonwriters to know it took you ten weeks, ten months, ten years, to finally get an agent?  Or do they just think, “Wow, that book must suck,” because they don’t know the business?

Does writing about your ongoing struggles as a writer–rejections, rejections, rejections–word count, word count, word count–buy my book!, buy my book!, buy my book!–appeal to anybody other than other writers?

Will other writers buy your book (to support writers) or just say they will?

And finally, does it make any difference?  Does a writer’s blog interest only other writers, and in that case, does it serve a valid purpose by creating a community of support and bitchery and hope, and selling books just isn’t that big a part of the equation?

What do you think? Seriously?

(And you know what will happen now? I’ll get answers on facebook. Because, you know, blogs are so last decade!)

the blog that posts johnny depp pics whether they fit the subject or not

I have found my brand.

A Gift for You: Rickman & Depp

Their duet from Sweeney Todd. Has anybody seen it? I’ve never seen the musical and don’t know the story, but oh my, they sound so luscious together.

Oh, audio only.

Please, tell me what you think of the musical if you’ve seen it, and the movie if you’ve seen it, and both if you’ve seen both.

I’m all ears.