May's Creative Challenge: The Photo Book

May starts tomorrow. In looking back over the first four creative challenges this year: January Drawing, February Watercolors; March mini comics zines, April NaNoWriMo, the May challenge seems every bit as interesting even if it is vastly different.

I'm doing a photo book. I've done these before starting with SoFoBoMo in summer of 2018. I miss SoFoBoMo, they went defunct some time in 2018. Their challenge was simply: take a picture a day at the minimum and at the end of the month put together a 35 photograph book as a .pdf. I've made six of these over the years, and I've printed two.

This year, since there is no real official, public challenge, this one is more personal.

I'm following the SoFoBoMo in that I'm going to generate a pdf at the end of the project. I also plan to print this one. I do not have to take all the pictures this month as my concept will not really allow time for that.

I'm shooting film on four different cameras: Vivitar PN2011, Holga 135BC, Holga 120N and the Pentax K1000. Additional photos, especially those pictures of the cameras I will take with my DSLR.

This particular project will have more text that the former photo books. I want to write about each camera and some of my process with each one. I do have some other writings on at least two of these cameras: Holga 120N and Pentax K1000. 

Ultimately, I think this project will showcase my design chops. This whole book will be designed in InDesign.

The April Creative Challenge: Camp NaNoWriMo, the final product

It took longer this NaNoWriMo to complete my manuscript than it had with others. I can finish a manuscript in anywhere from 7 to 21 days. This one I finished on Sunday the 23^rd of April. I had worked on this about two hours a day, an hour in the mornings and another hour in the evenings. I had never split up writing time before, and I found it to be a good way to work. In an hour I can usually write about 1,500 words, sometimes a little more if I don't have to think too much.

The other thing splitting up the time did was that it gave me a few hours to think of the next move. I also thought a great deal about Astoria, Oregon. We had been there for several days back in March. We did all the things I wanted to do. It was fun to introduce Lucian to coastal life. While were there, I found the places I would use in my story.

Why Does This Blog Give Me That Wishful Feeling?

It's April 18. I always get that wistful feeling during the second week of April and the thoughts of my blog. I guess it's because I started the thing on April 18, that was 2010. Way back then, things were very different. After all, blogs back then were very very cool.

Even though I still think blogs are cool, I think they are dated. I don't think people want to sit down and read blogs any more. I feel like this: “Social influencer killed the blog star.”

I don't care how uncool the blog is. I don't even care how little readership I get. Those days are behind me. In the olden days, there were tons of views, tons of readers, and tons of interactions. Unfortunately, I have not really kept up with the blog in recent years. I suppose it's because I just don't have the same needs that I once had. I no longer want a platform to show case myself as a writer, I just don't care.

I care enough about the blog not to have removed it. I mean, I could remove it, why not? Many of the links I've used over the years no longer work. I don't think the blogger platform is well maintained anymore. But for me, I still want this as a show of the years I did work on it.

Also, I have had old friends who I've lost touch with contact me through the blog. It's still got merits. And this week, as I came to the anniversary of this thing, I became very wistful. I still get the same feeling that I always got when I muse over something here and send it out into the ether.

I've got a virtual message here in a virtual bottle and as I stand on this virtual shore, I throw it into the virtual ocean.

The April Creative Challenge: Camp NaNoWriMo, The Cataract

Making the decision to rework The Cataract was a good one. It was a good one only because I knew with the little I had, I could do with it what I wanted to do with it all those years ago. I opened it up, a file that I hadn't really looked at in almost 22 years. It was a time capsule of sorts. It was like reading an old journal. I had put myself back into August 2001. I was a bartender living in Denver, Colorado. I was fantasizing about returning to Oregon, living in a small town somewhere out of the way and writing a novel.

When then girlfriend Deborah and I bought our tickets to Mexico, I knew I wanted to spend a good portion of the mornings writing. Thankfully, she was supportive of that. I asked my friend Kat if she would write the first sentence for me. I do not have that first sentence to share, but these opening paragraphs are what I did with it in that first 2001 draft:

It's raining here again today because it rains here everyday. Between the puddles and the clouds the drops fall steadily and I'm a sandwich. I watch the clouds reflected perfectly like mirrors in the puddles obscured by ripples of individual drops crowded now in puddles of fallen friends and brothers now part of the whole. Puddles.

I'm wearing my orange galoshes, and what a funny word... Galoshes. Although I know it would be easier to just use a dictionary, I'd read a whole book to find one word, a word like galoshes, or unctuous, or saffron, or love. Just to see it on a page somewhere in context, perhaps with an adverb describing an adjective right after it, wow. That's something to make me cheer: My galoshes can find the treasures at the bottom of an insidiously blue body of water, galoshes.

As I'm walking between puddles and clouds in the rain I spy an orange construction sign so vivid through the cataract that reminds me orange is my favorite color. So, I guess my story starts with just one line: I'm walking through the rain in my orange galoshes.

The April Creative Challenge: Camp NaNoWriMo, the introduction

I think many people know about National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo which happens in November. This November writing challenge began in 1999. Camp NanoWriMo began in 2011 and it currently has two events, one in April and the second in July. In short, the goal is to draft a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. I have been part of this since November 2017.

Since 2017, I've been a prolific writer. I find that strange only because I've been trying to do other things for that entire time. But having a NaNoWriMo event three times a year has kept me actively writing. I don't think I'll give up writing, but it isn't the priority that it once was.