It’s Easy to Be Outraged on the Internet. It’s Much Harder to Be an Upstander IRL.

Posted on November 14, 2016 by Janna G. Noelle

Like many people all over both North America and the world, I followed the live results of the US election on November 8.

Because I don’t own a TV, I attempted to stream the coverage on my laptop. Yet, because so many North Americans and people from around the world were also watching, the stream timed out every minute or so, in need of constant refreshing.

It was in this way, along with commentary from a battery-operated radio and the #ElectionNight hashtag on Twitter, that the end result eventually – astoundingly, at least to me – became clear.

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What’s New for the New Year? (or, On My Ongoing Efforts to Get Sh*t Done)

Posted on January 4, 2016 by Janna G. Noelle

What’s new for me for 2016? In a word, not a heck of a lot.

For all that that’s actually six words.

New Year’s is my favourite time of the year. I love new beginnings and the opportunity to forecast what shape the coming year will take by setting goals to help chart its course and advancement.

Given this, I’m no stranger to New Year’s resolutions. I even have a fairly decent record of achieving them.

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Necessity is the Mother of (Re)Invention – Blog Changes Ahead

Posted on January 6, 2014 by Janna G. Noelle

Of all the various forms of social media out there, blogging is definitely my favourite.

The ability to blog is a wonderful privilege for someone like me, for I was always the kid everyone was trying to shut up.

At school, despite being a strong student, I was constantly criticized on report cards for talking too much – both in and out of turn – and in general disrupting the class with my compulsive need to share every last idea that came into my head.

Thankfully, my father, who was a huge proponent of self-expression, told my teachers he’d much rather I talk than not talk.

Yet for someone like me, blogging is the perfect pursuit, for I get to express my thoughts (and my thoughts are usually fairly detailed, which is why I do better on WordPress than Twitter), and those who care can read it while those that don’t can tune me out entirely.

And yet, I’m not really that good of a blogger.

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Do You Like Stories Told in Present Tense?

Posted on September 30, 2013 by Janna G. Noelle

Yes or no?

Personally: no.

Not even a little, really.

This isn’t to say I won’t read a book if it’s narrated in present tense. Indeed, I’ve never purposely avoided reading one for that reason, and two of my favourite YA series – Libba Bray’s Gemma Doyle trilogy and Beth Revis’s Across the Universe trilogy – are written in present tense.

But it’s definitely not my favourite style or writing. I definitely need to brace myself before diving into a story told in this way. I certainly have no plans to write my own present tense story anytime soon.

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Is Anybody Listening? A lament (and relent) about Twitter

Posted on February 23, 2013 by Janna G. Noelle

I don’t get Twitter.

Or in Twitter parlance: #IDon’tGetIt.

It is, at face value, actually quite simple: an online venue in which one expresses him-/herself in 140 characters, follows the expressions of others, and categorizes his/her own expressions with hashtags for ease of allowing others to follow him/her.

Indeed, Twitter’s liberal use of symbology – #, @, RT, MT, and links beginning with bit.ly or ow.ly or foreshortened forms of other familiar websites (e.g. amzn, goo.gl, wp) – gives it less the air of a web service and more that of a futuristic language.

And who doesn’t think it’s cool to be bi-/tri-/multilingual?

I get all that.

I also get that Twitter’s a great way to keep up with news, which is the primary reason I joined up in the first place.

Only….

What I don’t understand is how some people manage to actually get said news.

Because there is just so much of it.

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