Phoebe North's Blog, page 8
September 9, 2012
A Possible Present
I’m writing this yesterday, but you’re reading it tomorrow.
I went fruit-picking yesterday/today with my dear friend D. D and I were roommates for one semester in college and she’s one of the best human beings that I know. We talked about college, how often we’d felt inspired. How we loved our professors and their strangeness. She told me about how once, a professor had her come over to his house to get notes on a paper and she sat on a stone bench in a beautiful garden and felt good and talke...
September 5, 2012
New Legs
This post may not be a neat one. I am not in a neat place right now. That’s not to say I’m in a “bad place”–just that things are messy, like some old lady’s yard that’s been allowed to grow too full of wild flowers. It might look pretty, but it might as well be impenetrable.
I might use inappropriate metaphoric language, like the above. I might muse and frown and get choked up, like I amright now, as I’m typing this.
I’ve been quiet now for awhile. Part of that is due to the simple reason of Be...
August 15, 2012
Vlog on Blogging Pet Peeves Up at WriteOnCon!
Lenore Appelhans of Presenting Lenore was kind enough to invite me to participate in a vlog with her for WriteOnCon, an online writing conference. We discussed our book pet peeves which vlogging taught us to avoid. The video is below; please hop on over to the WriteOnCon page to leave comments and thoughts!
I was so excited to be asked to participate–I’d previously participated in WriteOnCon as a querying writer several years ago, and it’s great to pay it forward now! Thanks to Lenore and the...
August 8, 2012
The Dark Knight Rises as a Trauma Narrative
Let’s get this out of the way:The Dark Knight Rises is a flawed film.
It suffers from the same fundamental problem as many Hollywood superhero ensembles (The Avengers, I’m looking at you). It’s overstuffed–several plotlines could have been taken out completely to no ill-effect. The political message is muddled and mostly extraneous. The story is also completely driven by the need to meet certain narrative beats; we need a character to rise from the asheshere, and so he’ll be cured of his lack...
July 14, 2012
Triadica and the Intensity of Teenagers
Two videos for you today, Gentle Reader. The first is from Ze Frank, and features Rainn Wilson. The second is from my sister, and features me and my best friend at sixteen:
Triadica (2000) from em sixteen on Vimeo.
I can definitely relate to what Rainn Wilson is saying in the first video because, at sixteen, immediately after viewing this 8mm film by my sister for the first time, I was hopelessly embarrassed by it. I had known that my friend and I had been a bit geeky–making up songs about our...
July 10, 2012
Website Redesign!
It looks like Wayne’s basement, but that’s not Wayne’s basement.
If you’re viewing my site through an RSS feed, click on over to check out my brand new lay-out! It’s . . . somewhat similar to my old lay-out, but even more sparkly! It also matches my business cards, and you know how I feel aboutthem.
On a note only tangentially related to business cards (but in my head, they’re extremely related), I’ll be at Readercon from Thursday night through sometime Sunday. If you’re awesome, get in touch....
July 8, 2012
When your characters walk away from you
I’ve been doing some blog maintenance in preparation for some website updates–winnowing down the archives, categorizing the uncategorical, cringing at old teasers. And in doing so, I stumbled across the following entry, from October of 2009:
Manuscript Update re: ENCOUNTER AT RHEA’S POINT[. . . ]
Through the increased production, the characters started to run away with the plot a bit: my protagonist got all nervous about her first kiss, and somehow managed to drag out the action leading up to i...
July 4, 2012
Green Summer
Happy Independence Day, Americans!
Remember those seedlings I was growing, weeks and weeks ago?
Look how they’ve grown!
While there are things I’d do differently were I to start my container garden today (put up a net around my blueberry plants, for one, because now I have a blueberry plant sans blueberries–stupid squirrels!), I’m pretty proud of my dinky little plants. Every time I turn around, they’ve grown more and more. I took these photos yesterday–today, that cucumber in the first photo ha...
June 17, 2012
Post Up @ Claire Legrand’s Blog
Claire Legrand, sweetheart, author, and unicorn lover, was kind enough to include me in her guest series, MG Memories! Check out A Swiftly Tilting Planet, and be sure to enter my giveaway of a copy of the novel, and the great, sparkly unicorn shirt seen at left!
June 13, 2012
YOU are my best friend.
Wise words from Ze Frank about feeding trolls.
