If Your Friends Jumped Off a Bridge
It's all Julie's fault. I say that a lot, because Julie is a bad influence. Ok, really, Julie is probably a good influence, because the things she lures me into often turn out to be educational, or fun, or both. But it's more fun to say she's a bad influence.
For those of you who don't know her, Julie Zaccone Stiller is a talented and amazingly prolific artist. She's also a fellow-addict....er....fellow-collector of Tarot decks. Yesterday on her blog, High Fiber Content, Julie mentioned that Lunaea Weatherstone's personal collage deck, the Full Moon Dreams Tarot, is finally available as self-published, limited edition, real-life deck instead of just pictures in cyberspace.
Do I NEED to spend big bucks on another Tarot deck right now? No. But of course I did. Because it's beautiful. And because self-published decks are my particular favorite Tarot decks and therefore my particular weakness. (My particular weakness in the area of Tarot collecting, that is. I have too many weaknesses to list in my life in general. Let's just say Denial and Self-control are NOT my middle names.) And besides, JULIE GOT ONE, so God forbid I shouldn't get one too!
So I'm now the proud future-owner of a Full Moon Dreams Tarot Deck, which I know I'll love. Thanks, Julie. Really. ;-)
Another Tarot Thing Julie and I have in common is that we've both created our own collage versions of the Major Arcana.
Here is her version, which I LOVE.
And here is mine.
And we've both done several Tarot-themed quilts, either for the Tarot Art Quilt Project or for other projects, or on our own.
Here are Julie's Tarot quilts.
Here are my three TAQP quilts.
And here are my two latest Tarot quilts, completed as part of a collaborative deck project for Comparative Tarot.
The Queen of Pentacles
The Hanged Man
It's also because of Julie and Dara, of Daramusing, that I did the whole NaNoWriMo "write a 50,000 word novel in a month" thing this past November, despite that fact that I've never written fiction!!!
Well, ok, that's not QUITE true. When I was about 9 years old I decided to write a book. I think I'd just finished reading "Little Women" at the time and so I decided I was going to write a story about four kids. But I knew I wasn't allowed to totally COPY "Little Women", so instead of four sisters, my story was going to be about two sisters and two brothers. And the family I was writing about was rich instead of poor because I thought it would be more fun if they could have a swimming pool, and a pony, and pretty clothes.
I seem to recall that I spent most of the first several pages describing the swimming pool, and the pony, and the pretty clothes. Then I decided it was getting a little dull, so I decided to kill off one of the kids from some unspecified disease we'll now call Bethitis. Naturally, I killed one of the boys. I WAS nine years old at the time and boys are icky when you're nine years old.
After killing one of the children, I couldn't quite decide where to go with the story next. At some point I remembered the phrase "a picture is worth a thousand words" and thought "hey! that'd be a fast way to finish then!" and started drawing pictures of the kids, the swimming pool, the pony, and the pretty clothes, figuring I was drawing thousands and THOUSANDS of words worth of book.
Eventually I gave up and made paper dolls.
I wish I knew whatever happened to that first writing attempt. I'd love to have it.
So anyway, this past fall, when Julie posted the link to the NaNoWriMo site and said "we should do this, it'll be fun!" and when I chatted with Dara and she said "c'mon, Deb, it'll be fun...I'll do it if you will", somehow before I knew it I'd signed up and was writing every day, despite having NO experience and NO plot.
That's why I wrote a romance novel. I figure there's only one real plot in every romance novel ever written: Two people meet, they want each other, they can't have each other, they overcome the obstacles keeping them apart and get together. Or sometimes maybe they die, but those aren't really romance novels, those are romantic tragedies....whole 'nother thing IMO. All that changes is the details. So. Thanks to Julie and Dara, I spent the entire month of November writing a still-untitled romance and even have an idea for another one. And I did it all without drawing a single picture. Go figure.
Now I'm blogging. Guess why I'm blogging. Go ahead, guess. BECAUSE JULIE AND DARA ARE BLOGGING AND THEY CONVINCED ME IT WOULD BE FUN!!! And ok, so far it IS fun. But somehow I can still hear my mother's voice in my head asking "If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?" Well I think I've already answered that definitively. If the friends were Julie and Dara....yes, Mom, I'd jump too.
Of course I hope we'd all be smart enough to be attached to bungee cords at the time. :-)
The Queen of Pentacles
The Hanged Man
It's also because of Julie and Dara, of Daramusing, that I did the whole NaNoWriMo "write a 50,000 word novel in a month" thing this past November, despite that fact that I've never written fiction!!!
Well, ok, that's not QUITE true. When I was about 9 years old I decided to write a book. I think I'd just finished reading "Little Women" at the time and so I decided I was going to write a story about four kids. But I knew I wasn't allowed to totally COPY "Little Women", so instead of four sisters, my story was going to be about two sisters and two brothers. And the family I was writing about was rich instead of poor because I thought it would be more fun if they could have a swimming pool, and a pony, and pretty clothes.
I seem to recall that I spent most of the first several pages describing the swimming pool, and the pony, and the pretty clothes. Then I decided it was getting a little dull, so I decided to kill off one of the kids from some unspecified disease we'll now call Bethitis. Naturally, I killed one of the boys. I WAS nine years old at the time and boys are icky when you're nine years old.
After killing one of the children, I couldn't quite decide where to go with the story next. At some point I remembered the phrase "a picture is worth a thousand words" and thought "hey! that'd be a fast way to finish then!" and started drawing pictures of the kids, the swimming pool, the pony, and the pretty clothes, figuring I was drawing thousands and THOUSANDS of words worth of book.
Eventually I gave up and made paper dolls.
I wish I knew whatever happened to that first writing attempt. I'd love to have it.
So anyway, this past fall, when Julie posted the link to the NaNoWriMo site and said "we should do this, it'll be fun!" and when I chatted with Dara and she said "c'mon, Deb, it'll be fun...I'll do it if you will", somehow before I knew it I'd signed up and was writing every day, despite having NO experience and NO plot.
That's why I wrote a romance novel. I figure there's only one real plot in every romance novel ever written: Two people meet, they want each other, they can't have each other, they overcome the obstacles keeping them apart and get together. Or sometimes maybe they die, but those aren't really romance novels, those are romantic tragedies....whole 'nother thing IMO. All that changes is the details. So. Thanks to Julie and Dara, I spent the entire month of November writing a still-untitled romance and even have an idea for another one. And I did it all without drawing a single picture. Go figure.
Now I'm blogging. Guess why I'm blogging. Go ahead, guess. BECAUSE JULIE AND DARA ARE BLOGGING AND THEY CONVINCED ME IT WOULD BE FUN!!! And ok, so far it IS fun. But somehow I can still hear my mother's voice in my head asking "If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?" Well I think I've already answered that definitively. If the friends were Julie and Dara....yes, Mom, I'd jump too.
Of course I hope we'd all be smart enough to be attached to bungee cords at the time. :-)
posted by Deb R at 3/12/2005 02:03:00 PM
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