Write, write, then write more.

Tags

nablopomo, nanowrimo

The key to writing is to keep writing, even when you produce nothing but garbage. That’s one reason I’ve been doing Nanowrimo this year. I’ve got to get into the groove where there’s enough volume to get something flowing. Which means generating crap. Which is not something I do well as a rule. Yet in he first 2 days, I’ve put out nearly 4000 words of crap. Which is great. It’s getting me moving last the initial struggle stage, and giving me a sense of achievement at the end of a writing session. Rather than wandering off and muttering rudely, I’m wandering off and feeling better about the overall output.

It’s not easy, but I didn’t expect it would be. I’m almost glad it isn’t.

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Kicking off NaBloPoMo

Tags

creative recovery, nablopomo, nanowrimo

November is a time for writing. Around the world, tens of thousands of budding novelists are kicking off their attempt at writing a novel. Nanowrimo is an orgy of writing, with the focus squarely on getting people to produce volume. The goal is writing 50000 words in a month, which is roughly 1600 words dally. At the end, you have a good start on a novel, and at least a novella.

Nablopomo, aims to encourage daily blogging, again with the focus on improving your writing through daily structure. After months of a creative slump, I’m using both as tools to help me get writing with regularity. Creative recovery is tough, and no writer enjoys the process. Without a forced effort, you just can’t make it back to anything remotely resembling your previous levels. So this month I’m committing to work on both better blogging, and to relearn to just write, even when it’s crap. I’ve got a pen and notebook for when I have the urge to story whilst out, and the iPad is loaded up.

Ahoy month of writing, and here’s to creative recovery.

Writing recovery

Tags

creative block, free form, Musings, working it out, writers block

It’s disconcerting when you wake up one day and realize that the ideas in your head just won’t flow out any longer. The words back up, the concepts log jam, and you’re stuck with things to share, and no way to do it. The harder you try, the worse the jam becomes until there’s a dam in your mind.

Periodically the spillway opens, and you get a little trickle out. It relieves the pressure, but does nothing to clear the backup. Sooner rather than later you stop trying, and walk around in a perpetual state of frustration and anxiety. The paradox is a pain to deal with. You need to write to clear the block, but nothing wants to flow out. You need audience feedback to help you figure out what works and what doesn’t, and you can’t find an audience.

You write an awful lot of crap. The apartment floor is littered with half hearted attempts at doing something. Nothing sounds right, nothing helps, and everything just sucks.

Until one day, you finally see a little crack in the dam. There’s something new trickling out from a different spot. It’s not the spillway, it’s a flaw in the dam. That’s where you move to, trying to see if you can pry that crack open. Just a little bit. Just enough to get the ideas moving again.

Keep pushing.

Chase a moment

Tags

deep thinks, photography

It’s easy to put things off. You don’t feel like buckling down for a work project, so you push it off. Don’t feel like doing laundry, push it off. It’s so common, most of us don’t think about it. It’s a borderline automatic response.

I’ve been driving past one of my favorite photo spots right around sunset for several weeks. Each time I go past, I’ve pushed the impulse to go take a few pictures off. There’s always time, I can do it later, next time I’ll stop.

One afternoon the realization hits, I’m running out of next times. It doesn’t matter that I push things off, time doesn’t pause when I do that. The clock never stops ticking. On an impulse I pull into the crowded parking spot. As the clock ticks down, I scramble up the steep trail, watching the light change.

In this moment I realize that I’m running out of time. As minutes tick down, the sky changes, colors shift, and I’m losing the race. I speed up, chasing the moment.

I reach the top, suck in a breath, and start firing off shots with my iPhone, desperate to capture something that’s racing away from me. Five shots, and the light is gone. I won’t know until I get home just what I captured. I walk back to the car, curiously calm after my race up the trail. It doesn’t matter what I caught. It just matters that today I didn’t push the chase off until tomorrow.

Do somthing

Tags

help others, life, make a difference, nablopomo

 

To often we wait for someone, losing sight of the fact that we are someone. Even a small effort can make a world of difference. It’s easy to get fixated on the grand gestures. I see this daily working in animal rescue. The assumption is you need to do something superhuman to make a difference. The reality is something as simple as sharing a status with your friends may be the difference between life and death for an animal. Asking for help can get a sick animal to someone who can help.

This is true in all areas of your life. Small gestures matter. Yes there need to be some big pushes. But a big push with no follow up is useless. Where a small push followed by another, and another can make all the difference. Getting out the door for a walk isn’t as sexy as going for a run. But if you run once a week, you may not see progress in your health. On the other hand, if you get out the door daily for a walk, you may see huge improvements in your health.

Each step matters. Do something and make a difference. Don’t just walk away because the task is daunting.

 

 

 

The value of a moment

Tags

365, deep thinks, life, nablopomo

Photography is all about capturing a moment, then translating that moment into a representation of what was happening. The translation is part of the photographer’s vision. It may need post production work, multiple takes, elbow grease, and a ton of planning to show you that moment.

Even when the photographer doesn’t capture the perfect moment, it still has meaning. Blurry and out of focus images still have value. That blurred shot may be the final glance of a treasured memory.

Life isn’t perfect and images aren’t always perfect. The memory is still beautiful and valued.

Expanding artistic horizions

Tags

365, art, photography

I’m not a pro photographer. I’ve never had the patience or inclination to push my photography to that level. I like taking the camera out, then playing around until I can get an image that matches what I see in my mind’s eye. Sometimes it’s happened quickly. Sometimes it’s taken years to figure out what I need to do. In the last year and change I’ve started learning two different techniques. One is a post production technique called HDR. In this technique, software is used to help merge multiple images to increase the range of tones you see in an image. The second thing I’ve started working on is flash photography. Like a lot of weekend photographers, I spent several years insisting that “natural light” photography was the best. That’s a fancy way of saying I don’t know one end of the flashgun from another. In the last few months I’ve started working harder to understand how flash works, and how to use it to get pictures I like.

If you follow my Instagram feed you will see a range of images from kitten snapshots, to travel, to thought out and composed shots. I just like showing people the world as I see it. And yes, I do see a lot of cats these days. The fun in art comes from sharing it. At this point in my life, it’s more critical to share what I do than it is to make sure every thought or image is perfect. If I don’t share, the work never breathes, and I can never grow.

Dare to think

Tags

365, life, not so wordless Wednesday

I don’t want to react. I want to think. My news feed is flooded daily with hundreds of pieces of data. Each piece includes a plea to do something. I’m supposed to click back, sign the petition, agree whole heartedly, and if I don’t, the world apparently ends.

Reacting is easy. Channel moral outrage, click button, done. Did I actually accomplish anything? More important, was that problem I outraged about a problem that I helped make better? Do I know anything about the problem or am I just retweeting something I didn’t bother to read?

Heaven forbid I slow down, think a bit, and then decide to go do some research. Heaven forbid I take the time to make an informed decision. Suddenly I’m a horrible person because I point out that the article you’ve been retweeting isn’t actually about what you think it’s about. It’s a bad headline, or worse a horribly skewed piece that’s not worth the pixels it’s rendered with.

Who has time for thinking and reading?? React, react, react. Outrage, protest, and ban the evil person! Don’t stop and think. Don’t stop and question.

Just react.

Time never stops

Tags

365, forward progress, motivation, moving forward, time

 

 

 

Time moves in a single direction.

Forward.

Yet we spend an inordinate amount of time trying to move backwards, against the flow of time. No matter how hard you try, you aren’t ever going to reset that clock. Time will always move forward, it will always win in a fight to go back. So you have two choices. Fight a losing battle, or learn to move forward.

Moving forward doesn’t mean you forget the past. It doesn’t mean you don’t try to fix things that happened which you may regret. It means you focus on working on those things in the present, with an eye on the future. You can apologize for the past. You then need to focus on correcting your behaviors now, and continuing to live with those positive corrections in the future.

Miss a workout? Don’t go back and try to fix that. Correct it today, and work to not miss tomorrow. Failed to do a homework assignment? Don’t go back. Fix it now, even if you don’t get credit, then move forward and learn.

Even if everything is falling apart around you, find one thing to do today that corrects a problem. Even if it’s something small like getting the dishes in the dishwasher. Focus on that correction, then keep building on it and move forward.

Life has no pause button. It has no rewind. Time will move on, even if you don’t want to. So go ahead and do something to move with the flow, rather than fight that losing battle.

Mending

Tags

deep thinks, life, motivation, moving forward, threading needle

Hands shaking, foot tapping, tongue sticking out I slowly advanced towards my objective. Slow, slow, slow, the thread advanced towards the tiny opening. Almost there, almost there…and at the last minute the thread darted left. Yet again, I missed the eye of the needle.

There was some inventive muttering and a curse word I still won’t admit to. Mom just raised an eyebrow and told me to try again. This was the summer of sewing. Mom decided that my brother and I needed to learn basic sewing and mending skills, plus sewing machine 101. John took to the tasks quickly. With his exceptional hand eye coordination and endless patience, the manual tasks of sewing were easy for him. I on the other hand struggled. With no depth perception, and the patience of a juju bee, trying to master the art of hand stitching a straight line taxed my non existent patience. The threading the needle lesson resulted in quite a few tears and a very unhappy Clara.

Bless Mom for having some extra patience. She wasn’t pleased that I seemed incapable of sewing in a straight line, but she kept encouraging me to master the basics. “What if you need to put a button on a shirt?” she’d ask.

“Glue” was my inevitable reply.

I did eventually learn how to do a basic hem, stick a button on a shirt, and stitch two pieces of fabric together. All without the addition of glue or duct tape. It’s not always pretty, but it is functional and I can get by until I can get myself to a tailor of seamstress. Or send the offending article of clothing back home.

Like any skill, mending requires some effort and a good bit of practice to get good at it. Anyone can slap a button on and attach it with some ugly stitches. If you want the button to look like every other one on the shirt, that takes work. Basic function can be achieved quickly. Making it pretty takes time. That’s when you make a decision. Do you spend the time needed to master the skill at the pretty level? Or do you go for functional and move on to something else that has a higher priority for you?

I’ve been content to keep my mending skills at functional. This weekend I fixed a torn strap on a favorite baseball cap, then reattached part of a sleeve on a t-shirt. It was nothing fancy, just some basic work that keeps two items of clothing functional and neat until I can get around to replacing them. I chose basic function, and then delegate to others who enjoy the process of mending more than I do.

Delegating is something most of us struggle with. Rather than obtain functionality in a skill, we fixate on doing it perfectly often ignoring the steps required to reach mastery. When we can’t do something perfectly, too often the task is tossed by the wayside, ignored. Worse, we berate ourselves for failing to accomplish the task at mastery level.

You can’t master everything in your life. We all have strengths and weaknesses. The key is understanding that learning a functional level to a task moves you forward. Waiting to achieve mastery before attempting the task means you don’t move at all.

I mended a shirt and hat this weekend. They look fine, and will hold up to the tasks required of them. I moved forward this weekend. Did you?