Raq, check out Naturalizer and Easy Spirit as well.

ita, there are flexy street soles; I never buy street shoes that don't flex.

Timelies. Just got caught up in this thread, because I was home from work yesterday with symptoms a lot like this:

I'm happy that everyone entertains themselves pretty well because I am recovering from the worst headache I have ever had. I don't know if it was a migraine, but I couldn't move without the worst pain I ever thought possible, I was nauseous, and there was just no escaping it. I have a low grade headache this morning, and I'm just hoping it doesn't bloom back to whatever I had yesterday.

So who knows, Nora, it may have been some kind of bug going around. I feel fine today. Sadly, I can't agree that it's the worst headache I've ever had, but it was damn close.

Anyway, if that was the price I pay for the lovely time Sunday, so be it.

I had such a nice morning. I held Ellie and watched the last two episodes of QaF. Nice way to spend the day. Now I'm off to the hospital to deliver bagels. I'm still feeling crabby about the whole hospital thing, but I'm trying to counteract that by remembering how much my parents have done for me over the years.

Still way behind on LJ - I feel like I'm so out of the loop.

In the mean time, here are some new Ellie pics: [link]

I never buy street shoes that don't flex.

I hate when shoes don't flex, but, sadly haven't been able to fill all my required shoe roles and still flex. Such is the curse of liking stompy shoes.

To be comfortable over the long run, my feet need to be able to move. So most boots end up causing me some pain because I can't crack the joints proactively. This pain is easily relieved by taking the boot off and wriggling, but that means I can't spend too much time out in boots that lace and don't zip.

Well, i am just ded from the cute.

aw, Ellie Fun In The Summer Time!

Doesn't that leave a messy middle ground where eschewing dialect means you are putting American idiom into the characters' mouths? Or do you prefer the writers to avoid writing characters for whom they can't nail the dialect?

I could be wrong, but I really don't think I'm putting American idiom into my characters' mouths. Am I writing my story exactly as an English writer living in 1811 would've written it? Of course not, and I'm not even going to try. But I think I'm doing a decent job of giving my characters a speech rhythm that's more British than American--and I intende to tighten that aspect of my dialogue upon edit--and of avoiding American or anachronistic word choices.

What I'm not doing is scattering "dinnas" and "havenas," for example, hither and yon throughout my Scottish characters' speech. My reasoning is twofold: 1) No one, anywhere, speaks English exactly as it's spelled. If you don't intend to write a BBC announcer as saying "militree" and "Cuber" for "military" and "Cuba," or an equally well-spoken American as saying "liddle" for "little," it seems somehow insulting to do phonetic spellings for regional accents. 2) Since my story has major characters from several different regions, I feel like it'd be an unnecessary burden on my readers to make them wade through an attempt to duplicate 4 or 5 different regional accents--I'm afraid it'd slow readers down and make them cast the book aside unfinished.

To be comfortable over the long run, my feet need to be able to move. So most boots end up causing me some pain because I can't crack the joints proactively. This pain is easily relieved by taking the boot off and wriggling, but that means I can't spend too much time out in boots that lace and don't zip.

I have several pairs of boots that I can't walk downstairs in, because they don't bend that way. It's annoying. But they look so cool!

I would spend half my life in combat boots, given my druthers, and the other half barefoot, but I really love shoes. I just don't like wearing them.

For the record, Susan, I wasn't talking about you. Rather, I was wondering about Jamaican dialect, and how one would handle that. As a reader, if you tell me she's selling yam in Papine, I don't want to read proper English coming out of her mouth -- and it's more than just grammar and vocabulary that distinguish her from the woman buying yam from her.

2) Since my story has major characters from several different regions, I feel like it'd be an unnecessary burden on my readers to make them wade through an attempt to duplicate 4 or 5 different regional accents--I'm afraid it'd slow readers down and make them cast the book aside unfinished.

Irvine Welsh writes in various Scottish and British dialect in Marabou Stork Nightmares quite effectively. But, the dialect is indicitive of psychological aspects of the character beyond just dialect. That being said, it takes a lot of work to read the first 50-ish pages as you get used to reading the dialect. After a while, it becomes more natural and easier to read, but the first few chapters were difficult.