Thursday, January 12, 2012
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
published online
Yay, an ezine with an older short story of mine (i'm on year 2 of writer's block) just came out today:
http://thescrambler.com/eng/issues/issue-46-june-2011/robin-crane/
Robin
http://thescrambler.com/eng/issues/issue-46-june-2011/robin-crane/
Robin
Friday, May 13, 2011
Monday, March 28, 2011
Sleepyhead
Phew, that is a long blog nap I've been taking since the new year started. While I've been asleep I've turned 32 and gotten a couple new cavities. I'll started blogging again soon. I plan to post good old Sweetheart Issue #6 up here tonight or tomorrow.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Sick of Sitting ‘Round
“I’m dying for some action/I’m sick of sitting ‘round here trying to write this book” – the boss
Blaaaaaah. Blah blah blah! Hell damn shit! Fuck! Stupid! Bunny! Puppy! Kitties! Lalalalalala! Okay I got that out of my system.
My grandpa moans in his sleep (well actually it’s up for debate whether he’s actually asleep or just sleepy when he says his trademark lament) “I’m old, I’m fat, I’m tired,” in a huge loud voice, practically every night, and if I were only a tiny bit less considerate, I would be bellowing this at night too these days. I have the post-Holiday doldrums in a big way. What I would like to do as a cure for these bore-blues is to start writing a third novel, a really long one this time, maybe even historical fiction (that’d be so cool! I’d really get to use my intelligence and my interest in history), but I have such writer’s block. It’s moved on to imagination block; I usually fantasize little stories all day long, like little scenarios of me telling someone off or someone interviewing me for a book on riot grrrl or something, silly little things like that, and I’m not even imagining those little things anymore, I’m just re-running and pondering recently watching film plots, etc. And I’m at least trying to read a lot of good writing to get me into a writing mindframe. I just finished reading an AMAZING book called The Colour by a British woman named Rose Tremaine, it’s really a strikingly well written book with a plot that doesn’t resemble anything I’ve ever read before. And now I’m reading Moby Dick and a book of short stories by Raymond Chandler. Still! No!! Inspiration!!! I’d like to go with Geof to Paris and to small towns in Ireland but that’s not really in the cards right now, but something like that would be so exciting. And I’d like a dog and a cat and a rabbit and a vegetable garden and a house and a literary agent and a million dollars and a best friendship with Bill Murray. Oh yeah and I wish Harry Potter and Griffendore were real. What was I saying? Oh right. Hell damn shit. Bunnies….Kitties…bored….don’t deserve a blog…. Xxoox princess robin
Blaaaaaah. Blah blah blah! Hell damn shit! Fuck! Stupid! Bunny! Puppy! Kitties! Lalalalalala! Okay I got that out of my system.
My grandpa moans in his sleep (well actually it’s up for debate whether he’s actually asleep or just sleepy when he says his trademark lament) “I’m old, I’m fat, I’m tired,” in a huge loud voice, practically every night, and if I were only a tiny bit less considerate, I would be bellowing this at night too these days. I have the post-Holiday doldrums in a big way. What I would like to do as a cure for these bore-blues is to start writing a third novel, a really long one this time, maybe even historical fiction (that’d be so cool! I’d really get to use my intelligence and my interest in history), but I have such writer’s block. It’s moved on to imagination block; I usually fantasize little stories all day long, like little scenarios of me telling someone off or someone interviewing me for a book on riot grrrl or something, silly little things like that, and I’m not even imagining those little things anymore, I’m just re-running and pondering recently watching film plots, etc. And I’m at least trying to read a lot of good writing to get me into a writing mindframe. I just finished reading an AMAZING book called The Colour by a British woman named Rose Tremaine, it’s really a strikingly well written book with a plot that doesn’t resemble anything I’ve ever read before. And now I’m reading Moby Dick and a book of short stories by Raymond Chandler. Still! No!! Inspiration!!! I’d like to go with Geof to Paris and to small towns in Ireland but that’s not really in the cards right now, but something like that would be so exciting. And I’d like a dog and a cat and a rabbit and a vegetable garden and a house and a literary agent and a million dollars and a best friendship with Bill Murray. Oh yeah and I wish Harry Potter and Griffendore were real. What was I saying? Oh right. Hell damn shit. Bunnies….Kitties…bored….don’t deserve a blog…. Xxoox princess robin
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Hollywood Weirdness
Living in Los Angeles, and Hollywood in particular, gives me a surreal feeling and sometimes an almost disbelief in my actual life versus various fictional lives I come across in movies and novels. I am a native Angeleno and I glamorized Hollywood with a purposeful naivete when I was a teenager – I knew that the corner of Hollywood and Vine was just a street corner with a heavy metal shop (or a liquor store or something – my memory fails me) and some poor people waiting for their bus on it, yet I loved that street corner anyway, and loved books and movies and songs and photos that built on the mythology of Hollywood, and I went there every weekend for awhile, a feeling of excitement on the bus ride there and usually a vague feeling of depression on the bus ride back but always wanting to live there when I grew up. I could go on forever on this part of my teens (Hollywood, Nirvana, Courtney Love, a book called Weetzie Bat, Guns N’ Roses and Riot Grrrl are the main themes that dominate my youth) and a few years ago I tried to write specifically about Hollywood but I find my attention span too short for all the non-fiction projects I start. Let me just sketch out a few more facts and then get to the Hollywood weirdness in particular that was distracting me as I drove to work this morning.
Facts: I loved Hollywood until my first band played its first show at a club in Hollywood and I was beaten up really bad there; then I wouldn’t go to Hollywood anymore, and started having panic attacks, and looked forward to moving out of the state for college. After college I moved back to L.A. and was appreciative of it and had the time of my life (not counting college) living in Hollywood. When me and my husband moved back to CA from Philly we lived in the San Bernardino mountains for awhile but when he started apartment scouting he told me he found the perfect place, and he ended up driving me to the same building I used to live in before, so I live where I used to live but now I’m a weird grown up going through an awkward early onset midlife crisis.
So that brings us up to date: I live in Hollywood and my midlife crisis consists of agoraphobia and a phobia they haven’t named yet, it’s an amorphous thing, it’s devastating but it lasts a whole life time sometimes, only white middle class girls seem to suffer from it and it’s characterized by not being entirely responsible with one’s tranquilizers sometimes and being a pretty flake and a bad housekeeper and an interesting person and an animal lover and a passionate crier and frightened and a wild gesticulator and a voracious reader. So the Hollywood weirdness that’s striking me lately is when I see it portrayed in movies or read about it in books. The examples that come to mind most readily are the movies “Heaven Can Wait”, “Greenburg” and “Funny People”, the A.M. Holmes’ novel This Book Will Save Your Life and the Joan Didion memoir The Year of Magical Thinking. I read or saw all of these works recently and in all of them there were appearances of places really close to where I live. In some cases even my street was named or shown. I don’t know how to end this post because this is just a ramble, not a fully formed thought. It just feels so weird to hardly be going out and to be going through this anxious phase full of fear and doubt and to see a version of my surroundings in works of fiction; when something is fictionalized it is given importance. It’s almost as though I’m watching or reading about my life, but my own life is so ___________ right now. That’s my current Hollywood weirdness.
Facts: I loved Hollywood until my first band played its first show at a club in Hollywood and I was beaten up really bad there; then I wouldn’t go to Hollywood anymore, and started having panic attacks, and looked forward to moving out of the state for college. After college I moved back to L.A. and was appreciative of it and had the time of my life (not counting college) living in Hollywood. When me and my husband moved back to CA from Philly we lived in the San Bernardino mountains for awhile but when he started apartment scouting he told me he found the perfect place, and he ended up driving me to the same building I used to live in before, so I live where I used to live but now I’m a weird grown up going through an awkward early onset midlife crisis.
So that brings us up to date: I live in Hollywood and my midlife crisis consists of agoraphobia and a phobia they haven’t named yet, it’s an amorphous thing, it’s devastating but it lasts a whole life time sometimes, only white middle class girls seem to suffer from it and it’s characterized by not being entirely responsible with one’s tranquilizers sometimes and being a pretty flake and a bad housekeeper and an interesting person and an animal lover and a passionate crier and frightened and a wild gesticulator and a voracious reader. So the Hollywood weirdness that’s striking me lately is when I see it portrayed in movies or read about it in books. The examples that come to mind most readily are the movies “Heaven Can Wait”, “Greenburg” and “Funny People”, the A.M. Holmes’ novel This Book Will Save Your Life and the Joan Didion memoir The Year of Magical Thinking. I read or saw all of these works recently and in all of them there were appearances of places really close to where I live. In some cases even my street was named or shown. I don’t know how to end this post because this is just a ramble, not a fully formed thought. It just feels so weird to hardly be going out and to be going through this anxious phase full of fear and doubt and to see a version of my surroundings in works of fiction; when something is fictionalized it is given importance. It’s almost as though I’m watching or reading about my life, but my own life is so ___________ right now. That’s my current Hollywood weirdness.
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