Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Building Great Sentences

I am so pleased that the course I ordered with Brooks Landon as professor came with a booklet. Thus armed, I will not drown in this technical writing craft class. I admit that I'm a junkie of the writer's craft with no intention of returning to the land of sanity.

The titles are enough to get my juices flowing:Grammar and Rhetoric, Propositions and Meaning, Rhythm of Cumulative Syntax, Riddle of Prose Rhythm, Cumulative Syntax to create Suspense, Mechanics of Delay, Balanced Sentences and Balanced Forms, Rhythm of Twos, Rhythm of Threes, Balanced Series and Serial Balances.

Ah yes, those of you with your MFAs, your English BAs are cringing at the memory, but I am reveling in the excitement! How I value what you despaired. This is what age can do for the determination of the writer!

Laugh all you want at my giddiness. The great puzzle of the Great Sentence will be mine to unravel shortly!

Okay, that is now. I'm not a complete idiot in rose colored glasses. I'll read this in two weeks and will be posting how much I hate it. It matters not, the goal is to learn, to apply, to dissect, to advance my craft and I will. One way or another. Hopefully it will involve blood, sweat, and tears or it will have not been worth the effort.

4 comments:

  1. I took English in University and there was one course on grammar & rhetoric that I missed but wished I had taken...I always thought it would give me a different & unique perspective as a writer...and maybe I would've gotten over my spelling/grammar reluctance-avoidance issue...

    see http://wp.me/pTtmo-1N

    Hope you enjoy your course!
    Julie Johnson
    busywriting.wordpress.com

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  2. This sounds like a great class. The way I learned grammar was when I started teaching it. Shew! It was hard.

    I found this link of a survey done by a fantasy writer re: the road to publication. I thought it might be of interest to you: http://www.jimchines.com/2010/03/survey-results

    Happy writing, Meg!

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  3. ...enjoyed your thoughts Meg:)

    a grain of advice? Don't tread lightly...absorb every last ounce of info provided.

    Take it from someone who strolled into college on a flying carpet, having been accepted on English grades and prowess alone. Thinking I could coast my way through school, majoring in Budweiser, and ride on with talent alone.

    Woke up one morning with a hangover, failing grades, and a one-way ticket home.

    Learn everything you can, and make an impression that lasts.

    Good luck:)

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  4. I love that Grace. I hereby promise to absorb every last ounce of info provided... and then yank even more out of their brains with their permission or not. :-)

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