Teresa Fannin, reader, writer, gardener, chocolate fan & tea drinker

Month: August 2011

arriving in LA…

Los Angeles. Whew! Back Home and yet. Not. An exciting week ahead. I have planned workshops and am using the new Guidebook to keep track of all things 40th anniversary event. 1250 people will be in the conference. We’ll be sitting on top of each other for lunch, but that’s okay. because….

The energy is amazing. It is summer camp! We talk about writing. We write about writing. We worry about writing. We’ll hear about writing…well, and illustrating as well. But since I can’t draw a straight line crocked, then for me it’s about the writing.

so. I’m here. I up for this. And I’m looking forward to finding out great and wonderful things. more later.

 

too busy to think….

…and it’s been too hot. The temps in the south have been smothering…95 degrees with 99 percent humidity. For a SoCal girl from the great past when LA was in perfect climatic harmony, this is tough. But enough about me.

I’ve got lots of excuses as to why I don’t write, but I need to swallow them and move on. I’ve thought about a post on Harry Potter. But I was so sad that there would not longer be this huge world wide phenomenon that would make you salivate at the thought of a new HP story coming out. Was it a good movie? Yeah. Were the books good? Yeah. They were amazingly brilliant in their concept, design, characters, setting, plot. Wow! Were they that well written? Probably not. But they were good and the fans loved them. And, like any series, you were riveted to the outcome for Harry and his pals.

I also wanted to write about Captain America. I liked the movie, up until the ending. Captain America was all about this *ideal* macho hero who was also self-effacing because he knew what it was like to be the underdog, the weakling. Captain America would say things like “You’re a brick.” And it wouldn’t sound hokey. But then to bring him into the 21st Century. Nope. Don’t want to see it. Somethings deserve to stay in their own place.

Or. I could talk about politics. Yeah. No. All this discord is so American. Although all the ‘crisis’ talk makes me nervous, I sort of wonder if, not too dissimilar from probably millions, if we really need to have all this news all the time. I wonder if that’s why the ‘dark and disturbing’ children’s lit is so popular, because we’re all so negatively charged by the constant news cycle we never have time to think about happy. Just happy.

Wednesday it’s out to LA for the SCBWI conference. I’m excited to see everyone. Packing today so I can already feel my neck tightening up in anticipation. I think I’ve picked some excellent sessions to attend and I’m so up for the Monday intensives programs. Yeah, yeah, this was sort of random. Must get used to writing in this often. Now off to get Aaron off the top of the fence and down into the action. Sheeze. Always a problem with a twelve year old 🙂