A Year of Creative Challenges

Refer to the first post of the year "A Year of Creative Challenges."

As 2023 comes to an end next week, I see it go with a small level of sadness mixed with a pinch of pride. I started this year with notion that I would do a creative challenge a month every month. Many of the challenges I took required me to work on them daily. That was a lot of commitment. Some of them I finished quickly, and some took longer than the month they were intended to take. Some of these I did with friends. Some I did with strangers. Some I did alone.
Here's the rehash:

January—Daily drawing challenge with Kimberly. I did 31 pen and ink drawings.

February—Daily watercolor painting with Kimberly. I did 28 watercolor paintings.

March—A mini comic. I made a four part mini comic in a zine format. I made hand drawings that I put into vectors with illustrator and did the layout in InDesign.

April—Camp NaNoWriMo. I wrote a 50,000 word novel called The Cataract.

May—Daily photos with Kimberly. I made a photobook from Smartphone photos. I also made a second photobook with some film I had developed during the month. So, two for one this month.

June—Painting project. I painted 20 faces. This was a weird one.

July—Camp NaNoWriMo. I wrote a second 50,000 (closer to 60) word novel called Exile.

August—Click it up a notch photo challenge. This was the dog of the year. I used my DSLR and I hated every day of this. The resulting book was not all that bad.

September—Poetry. I did this one lofi. I typed the poems with a manual typewriter and then bound the poems together into a book with some pastel paintings. A true one of a kind.

October—Inktober with Kimberly. I did 31 pen and ink drawings.

November—NaNoWriMo. I wrote the third novel of the year. This one is called: Twenty-four Hours in Vancouver.

December—A submission a day. I submitted 31 short stories to 31 different magazines.

Additionally: I read 52 books, wrote 52 blogposts, drained countless pens and filled a dozen notebooks. It's been a very prolific year.

A Submission a Day: Final Thoughts

I love the very idea of getting a story published. I can't think of a single writer who doesn't like this. I love the small literary magazines too. I love that so many of them are looking for writers of marginalized communities. I am tickled to think that so many magazines and editors are after the same thing that I'm after: something different, something new, something with flavor.

I don't fear for the future as some of my colleagues do. I don't think that AI will take over. And who cares if it does? Once the power goes out, so will the computers. I also think that people who read literary magazines are looking for something a machine cannot provide. When you get involved with a literary magazine, what you really want is community.

As for me? Well, it's been a fascinating glimpse into who I was as a person and as a writer. Sure, I have written a great many short stories. I can tell with utmost honesty, and this is not a self deprecating thing, that most of these stories are not very good. I have to ask myself, what was important when I wrote them? Was the product important? No, it was the process. I have always been the writer that will write ten stories and pick the best one and I feel like that provides me with better odds than to just write one.

I will not say that this is the end of my writing of short stories. I will not say that I'm eager to write more in the future either. I have no plans to continue writing them. If I've learned anything over the years what it takes to produce a good short story is to read a bunch of them, and then start writing a bunch of them. I'm no longer willing to do that.

What's going to happen with the stories I've put out for consideration this month? I won't know the outcome for weeks, possible months. The few editors that have sent rejections already I am very grateful to. If an editor is not interested in a story, the most considerate thing they can do is to reject it quickly.

I started this because I wanted to be relevant. Have I become relevant? Again, I won't know for months.

What I do know, I've been enjoying this process immensely.

A Submission a Day: Part 2

As I started this process of submitting a story a day, it came to a question of which stories. I have written just under 200 short stories since 2009. I have, maybe, another 100 that I wrote before 2009. When I say I have 300 short stories, I think this may be a very conservative number. Please don't think I'm a braggart, just because I've written 300 short stories, doesn't mean they're any good. And of the good ones, it doesn't mean that they're publishable.

How does one figure out the stories to choose for submission? Well, it's not nearly as hard as you might think. I decided to forgo anything written before 2009. Of the two hundred that remained, I decided not to use any that had a word count over 4,200 words. Who the fuck wants to read that many words? Not me. Then, I cut out the ones that I knew for sure were not in good shape. Then I chose what I thought was a good representation of what I write and who I am.

Who Was I?

What I discovered, and alarmingly so, is that writers really do write what they know. So many of my short stories are about chain smoking, heavy drinking and fucking on the floor. These are things that I don't do any more. But I did. And now, I realize that it's cliché. It's all so very cliché.

So, if I remove all the stories about being a drunken buffoon, there wasn't many left over. I picked 13 stories, all between 900 words and 4,200 words. And away I went.

By the end of the second week, I had held true to the submission a day. I used newpages.com to research my markets. I've already received a few rejections.

A Submission a Day: part one

For December's creative challenge, I decided I would submit a short story a day all month. The reasons why I decided to do this are so many that I don't know if I'll be able to organize my thoughts on the subject.

For starters, I have been feeling low lately. This happens to me from time to time. It usually happens in the fall and into the early part of the winter. I really loathe the winter. I live in Colorado, and I do appreciate the fact that it's sunny all winter. It's dry. It's brown. It's really fucking dirty. And to circle back around to the submission process, when I feel down, the rejections that will inevitably come my way just don't affect me negatively. In the event that I get a publication, well, it really improves the overall feeling.

Also, I feel like every few years when I don't feel relevant anymore, a few publications make me feel like I'm still here, I'm still alive. To put it into perspective, my last publication was in the fall of 2020. That's a long time ago.

Then there is a practical element to this. When I submit to magazines, I treat it like research for my own magazine, Umbrella Factory Magazine. After all, UFM got it's start because of a rejection letter I got back in 2009.

The other thing I know, and this happens almost without fail, 90% of these submissions will be rejected. If not rejected, then ghosted. That leaves me with the 10% that will run in a magazine somewhere. If I submit all month, 31 submissions, if all goes well, I can count on 3 publications.

NaNoWriMo 2023 Twenty-four Hours in Vancouver: The Conclusion

I would be remiss to exclude my feelings with this project, this year's NaNoWriMo, this Twenty-four Hours in Vancouver. The feelings, all of them, intense ones too, are all over the place. The truth is, I really don't know how I feel or where to begin.

I could begin in 1999, November. I wrote the original story then. I was living in Southeast Portland and working for the Cascade Pacific Council, Boy Scouts of America. I was 27. I was very unhappy, and for the life of me now, I have no idea why. I was unhappy with work. I thought I was a sellout. But being a sellout, as such, doesn't seem that bad of a thing to me now. I felt like a fraud working for the Boy Scouts too. I didn't like Southeast Portland. All I wanted to be was a writer, even if I didn't know what that meant.

NaNoWriMo 2023, part 3

I have so many feelings right now with my NaNoWriMo manuscript that I am really unable to order them. It's really the reworking of Twenty-four Hours in Vancouver that I'm overwhelmed with. I did not feel the way that I do now when I wrote the original story 24 years ago.

Twenty for years is such a long time.

I was thinking about things the other day when we went to the Veteran's Day Parade. I was thinking about it because so much of my current novel and all the novels that involve Sam Foley, the main character of Twenty-four Hours in Vancouver, has so much to do with being a veteran. Specifically, a veteran of war. I suppose all veterans deal with their part in the war in different ways. I say this, because there is nothing more unattractive to me than seeing old men wearing the uniform of their younger selves like they're trying to prove something. I mean, most of us were in the military for short amounts of time, 2 to 4 years mostly. Why try to relive that? It puts me off.

NaNoWriMo 2023, part 2

I have been to Vancouver, BC only twice. I was there in November of 1999, and that visit was only twenty-four hours. Admittedly, I did so much during that visit that it seemed like a much longer time. And, as the case was, I was alone during the road trip to and from, so I had ample time to think. Also, I faithfully wrote everything down upon my return to Portland.

The second time I went to Vancouver was a year later in November of 2000. That trip I was with my girlfriend at the time, and one of my best friends and the three of us visited another friend once we got there. The second trip to Vancouver, needless to say, was vastly different than the first. I found myself taking everyone around to various sites of my first visit, but I did not tell any of them why.

NaNoWriMo 2023 Twenty-four Hours in Vancouver

What more is there for me to say, I'm participating in NaNoWriMo again this November. It is the third NaNo event I've done this year, as I did Camp NaNoWriMo in both April and July. And like the former two, I'm doing a complete rewrite of an old novel.

This month, it's Twenty-four Hours in Vancouver. There are a few things worth nothing as I'm getting into this. First, I wrote the initial story in November of 1999. It was, in fact, a story about 24 hours I had in Vancouver. I had gone there for a quick get out of town, and since I was living in Portland, Oregon at the time, Vancouver, British Columbia was not so very far away. I wrote the original in a period of about 2 days. It wasn't much of a novel, properly speaking, being just over 17,000 words. It wasn't even much of a story. But I also wrote it 24 years ago, and things for me have changed a great deal.

Since I rewrote Exile in July, Twenty-four Hours in Vancouver is now the oldest manuscript I have. I think I always wanted to rework it, but I never knew how. I think in the past, I thought I would just have to go into it and work little bits out. But as I've been in the business of rewriting old work this year, I have found that it is a completely new thing. After all, The Cataract of last April retained only the setting of the original piece I wrote in 2001, and I didn't even read the 1993 Exile before I completely rewrote it.

Inktober, Last strokes

Day 31: Fire

If now is a good time for honesty, I may as well say, I finished Inktober early. This is nothing new for me. All of the creative challenges I've done this year, with the exception of the “Click it up a Notch” photography project, I have finished early. Some days, I just have more energy than others, and I get more done.

Some final thoughts:

These were my favorite prompts, and they were not the best things I drew:

Day 8: toad
Day 11: wander. I drew a Neil Young looking dude with a bindle
Day 24: shallow and
Day 29: massive

I feel like this was a challenging endeavor and I'm glad I did it. Often, I worked on these drawing in the evenings after my family went to bed. If nothing else, I'm grateful to have spent my quiet hours doing this and not staring into a screen.

Inktober Week four

Day 14: Castle

This week as I've been drawing I have continued to muse about time. Not time in the indexing of memories or the future plans sort of time. Now, this week, it has been less of a question of where did the time go and more of a question of how did I not see all this time before?

I've been trying out new things. No doubt. I find it funny that since August, I've been doing creative challenges that do no need a computer. Sure, the photography challenge and subsequent photobook in August needed a little tinkering with InDesign, but it wasn't necessary. And the poetry book I did in September, much like Inktober, didn't even require electricity.

I find the time I spend on these lofi activities makes me feel a certain way. It's like I can spend a couple of hours watching a movie on Netflix or endless YouTube videos and when I'm done, I feel tired, but I can't sleep. I feel wound up and exhausted. But, if I spend the same amount of time drawing or writing in my notebook or reading, I feel relaxed and sleepy. It probably has something to do with being wired a certain way, I have no scientific proof. By the anecdotal evidence is profound.

Going into the final days of Inktober, I don't know if I'm ready for it to en

Inktober Week three

Not really a drawing. Day 5: Map

As this drawing challenge continues, I find myself musing over other things. I didn't have a specific thing I wanted to think about during these hours. I did not have an overarching theme to consider. I didn't even think about having something I wanted to learn.

What I could have had, this whole time was something drawing related. I mean, I wouldn't have considered the paper I'm using as I'm still using the same sketchbook I've been using all year. I have not really considered the pens either. I am still using Micron pens, but I've decided to make a move to the Staedtler pens as the Micron wear out. This is for no real reason, except maybe I like the way the nibs are shaped a little better.

No, what I've been musing over is time. My mind wanders when I draw. I have ample time to think, which I like. Since Inktober has fallen between the poetry project I did in September and the Novel writing project for NaNoWriMo that I plan for November, being able to clear my mind of all verbal noise has been a blessing. I find I've been thinking about the deep past, my deep past. Things that happened very long ago, and how they have impacted me now. I've also been thinking about dead friends. I don't care for the autumn very much, and I've lost friends and family members during this time of year. But that has nothing to do with drawing.

As the weather has been cooling down, I know it's time to get serious. I'm in the middle of the third week of the Inktober challenge, I don't feel like I'm slowing down anytime soon. There's just under two weeks left. Maybe I will have a revelation between now and then.

Inktober Week two.

The process has been going fairly smoothly, I think. As I sit down to draw, I've been thinking about the prompts. I think about it because of these two questions: what can I draw that will be unique and what can I draw with my skill set?

Sometimes, I'll Google the word and look at images. Sometimes, this is not a good thing. For instance the prompt for October 9^th was “bounce” and drawing a blank, I looked it up. I wouldn't say I was horrified, horror isn't the right word. But looking up bounce, I just didn't think I was going to get what I got. Rather than drawing big body parts, I chose to draw a pogo stick.

Interestingly, the pogo stick brought up many miseries of childhood. I was never mistreated by a pogo stick, but thanks for asking. I was a troubled child, and I was often shuffled around to different babysitters. I have a spotty memory of one babysitter in particular. Their was a rusty pogo stick in the alley. There was also a little girl there too, and when my mother came to get me, I remember this little girl specifically asking my mom if I could stay a little longer. I don't remember anything else, and I may have been there only once.

It was a funny memory to have, for sure. I was enjoying it, the memory, as I was drawing the pogo stick. I think if it weren't for that act of drawing, I would not have had the memory, not at least until the years of senility get here.

Pogo sticks aside, I've been scribbling away

Inktober, the preamble

When I started the graphic design program at Front Range, I was terrified of the two art classes that I had to take to earn the degree. It only made sense that I would have to take some art classes, after all, because not everything can be generated with software. Of course, the trends as they continue will make this thought obsolete. Enter AI generated art, I just don't know how I feel about it. On one hand, it's great because you can make a mockup very quickly, and go. On the other hand, it is AI. I suppose you can train AI to do things a certain way, but babysitting a computer was nothing that I had in mind. There is still something great about human generated art. If not the art itself, then the fact that someone took the time to learn to do it, practiced it.

When I took the intro to drawing class, I was nervous about it because I never felt like I had much in the way of artistic inclinations. I also know that art is subjective, and I know that there is a great deal of discipline in art. I was delighted by the class, and I have been drawing nearly daily since.

What I find when I draw is a peace of mind that is different from other practices that I have. When I draw, I don't care about the outcome as much as I care about how I feel. It's strange. I don't generally share my drawings, not even with my family. The exception to this, of course, is when I do a creative challenge with my friend Kimberly.

Kimberly has become somewhat of a character in these blog posts, poor thing. But, we have done a few of these challenges together, and it's fun to see what the other is doing or how to entertain each other. We did Inktober last year, the first year either one of us has done it. We did a second drawing challenge last January. This year, Inktober is our third drawing challenge.

My intent, is to draw with my micro pens and sharpies in my sketchbook.

Our Part of the Night, the outcome.

As it started to happen, it began to happen very fast. I was typing up my poems and enjoying it. I was doing it during the day. During the day, I was so lofi with the typewriter that I wasn't using any electricity at all. Sometimes I was outside. Beautiful.

I made a mock up of what each page should look like, and then I made a page jig. I cut out the place where the title would go, and the page number so I could stamp those in later. I measured where the spine would be, where the poems would start. And then, success.

What I found was this: I could choose the order of the poems later. I could choose the order except on the individual pages. I typed all the poems and then ordered them. On each page, the poems are placed in the same spot. The titles, having gotten stamped in later, were also on the same placement on each page.

Then, although it is not part of the poetry itself, and these were not something I did this month, I decided that I would add in some of my pastel paintings. I had done almost all of these in 2020 during the great lock down. They had been in a folder for years.

I cut the images to size, I ordered the pages, I numbered the pages. Then I cut the cover, a plastic folder, to size. Then I started stabbing. And I only stabbed myself twice.

I drew a self portrait and added it in.

I have a one of a kind poetry chapbook. The finished project is a delight to hold and it really seems more important than the bad poems and the messy drawings in between. What it is, ultimately, a lofi expression in a final piece.

Our Part of the Night, Part 3

As I was starting the writing process, I started to think of the final product. Since I was going to have at least 30 poems, and front and back of a piece of paper, I would have a minimum of 15 pages.

Last June, I was at The San Francisco Center for the Book. I had a week long intensive course on how to bind books. So, I knew I would bind the poetry chapbook by hand. I thought about all the styles that I learned, and all the different structures for a book. Which one was going to be the best was left up to debate.

Then there was another issue. I have a manual typewriter and when the keys, some more than others, hit a piece of paper, it leaves a big imprint. I found that sometimes the key would tear though the page. There was no way I would be able to type on the front and back of a single sheet with any success. Sure, I could have found thicker paper, something with a better bond, or an appropriate tooth. Or I could only use on side of the page.

Ultimately, I decided to use some 8.5 x 14 paper we had here. I would fold it in half, making each page 8.5 x 7. So, in a way, I was only typing on one side of the paper.

I decided to fold the paper, make the loose ends go into the binding, and leave the folded edge out. And with that, with the necessity and with the confines, I chose to do a Japanese stab binding.

Our Part of the Night, part 2

In the past when I've done this poetry project, I had always composed them initially in a notebook. What I've done is simple, I will write anywhere from 2 to 10 poems in my notebook that are either the same poem, the same title, or the same thread. Once that's done, some time later, I'll go back to them, edit them by either finding the piece that works the best, or by combining some parts of several poems into a single one. This usually happens on the computer.

I put the individual poems into a folder and sometimes I'll title the folder with the intention of making a chapbook. Sometime I'll make the chapbook. When I make the chapbook, it is digital, it always stays digital. I've never once printed a chapbook. I consider the project completed and I move one. Over the last several years, I do this in September between a photo project in August and Inktober in October.

But this year, I decided to skip the computer outright.

Our Part of the Night, the preamble

As September settled in, I was a little fried from the click it up a notch photo project. I'm not altogether sure why the photo project kicked my ass as much as it did. I mean, What? I have been snapping pictures for as long as I can remember, and the two former photo projects this year worked out very well. I blamed it on the camera, sure, but there had to be something else at play too. I think the real issue with the camera and the process may have had something to do with having to be at my computer for so much of the time. I'm always at the computer and that has gotten tiresome.

I was thinking about all the hours, all the years I've been doing creative things and I have to admit, the computer has become a more recent thing. The other issue with the computer is that even though I'm sitting at it, I'm not always working.

When in the middle of a crowd of robo-people one beautiful August morning

This morning, I was cagey. This happens to me a lot. It happens to me a lot on the weekends. My family likes to move slowly on the weekends, and my little boy won't even get dressed if he can help it. This is probably because everyone leaves the house for work or school during the week. I don't leave the house. I live here. I work here. I'm here right now. On Saturdays and Sundays, I still live here, but I don't have to work.

“I gotta get out of here,” I said.

“Going on a bike ride?” my wife said.

“Just going,” I said.

Now, I have to tell you that my neurosis comes out in very strange ways. I know this, and I don't care. When I was younger, I would try to explain my habits and behaviors. Now, I just don't care. The particular thing I did today I've done for many days throughout my life. Yes, I was on my way to go for a little walk around the neighborhood, but I felt compelled to bring my notebook and pen with me.

Ugh! This Fucking Photo Project Sucks!

I just can't seem to walk away when something isn't working. I mean, I won't even put down an awful book without finishing it. I can be reading the worst book ever written, and I will slowly, painfully take it in a few pages at a time because I'm not interested enough to really read it and I can't just not finish it.

I guess I'm the same why about a project. I'm working on this awful photo challenge right now. I'm struggling with it in fact. And what's sad is that I've been at it for well over a month, and I wanted to do it in August from start to finish.

I had such lofty intentions. I thought I could learn about my camera, learn how it works, how to do new and interesting things with it and have this wonderful learning experience.

On Writing Denver

There is no reason why I should think about Denver. I lived in Denver a few different times and for not real long periods. I would say from 1992 until 2010, a mere 18 years, I lived in Denver four different times for no longer than four years at a shot. Denver was just a place I went in and came out of, I don't know why. And the end of my time in Denver really was in 2010 when Janice and I went to Oregon.

Denver is only 30 miles down the road. I still have friends in Denver. I never get there and when I do, I marvel at all the changes, the changes to the town and to me. I don't really like visiting the place. Denver today is a much bigger, much more crowded place than it was years ago, and this is true of just about everywhere on Earth. As for my friends, I talk with them only very seldom despite how much I love them and value them and the times we had when we were all young and drunk and without families.

But I write a lot about Denver. Or rather, I set many stories in Denver. I do the same with Portland, but that's more permissible only because I really felt free in Portland. I never felt free in Denver. I often felt oppressed when I lived in Denver. For many years I felt like a poseur in Denver. My relationship with Portland is pure, but my relationship with Denver is real.

Plot

So, I had coffee with my buddy Dan the other day. It was a lovely day, and we drank coffee, and that is all the action that took place. Not much of a plot, is it?

Dan has been cooking up this story in his head for years. I can't tell you much other than that. He has told me bits and pieces of it over the years and each time he does, I'm more and more impressed with it. He has thought about it for a long time, he has constructed it, developed it. He has made notes. All he really lacks is the act of writing the actual story. I have faith that he will. There is only so long that a person can ruminate on something like this until it tears out of the skin and becomes its own thing.

So, there we were, having coffee.

A few pages from this month's photography challenge

 

Exile: the Camp NANOWRIMO project, The Conclusion

It's done. It came out to 61,516 words. No small feat. I opened it 56 times in the past 23 days and the total editing time came to 22 hours, 17 minutes. About an hour a day.

Is this the best novel I've ever written? No. Was it the most fun? No, not really. I did it, and I was compelled to do it.

And I think if it weren't for Camp NaNoWriMo, I would not have written this. I would not have rewritten a 30 year old novel. And as it stands, I still haven't read the old one.

Hell, if I'm honest, I may never read this one.

Exile: the Camp NANOWRIMO project, Part 3

Realizing the patterns

When I started Camp NaNoWriMo a mere 17 days ago, all I knew was that I wanted to rewrite the remains of a 30 year old project. Incidentally, I have not read this project despite being 48,000 words into the rewrite. I had only planned on writing 50,000 words, so it seems as if I'm almost done. I think I still have at least 10,000 to go. It seems this story is worth more than I thought it was originally worth.

At the time that I wrote the initial story, the spring and summer of 1993, I was in flux. I worked at a picture framing franchise, and I lived in Boulder. I moved from Boulder to Denver and I also stopped working at the frame shop to work at the Colorado Department of Health. I also stopped attending classes at Araphoe Community College and I started at Metro State. It was a time of tremendous change. I so seldom think about that time in my life. I have lost all contact with the people I knew then, and I don't go to any of the neighborhoods that I lived or worked in at that time. Plus 30 years is a long time.

Exile: the Camp NANOWRIMO project, Part 2

The Half-way Point

This is the 13^th NaNoWriMo event that I've participated in. I feel like I'm starting to get a handle on it, at least in my own way.

What I'm finding now, ten days into it is that I've somehow compartmentalized this activity. I mean, I work on it for an hour in the evenings, and yes, I do time it. I can get anywhere from 2,000 to 2,300 words down in an hour. In a way, this project is no different from the other projects I've done. I mean, I've worked on this one in the same way I've worked on previous ones. And I've noticed in the last few that I've done, I am much more focused when I'm working, and I tend to not think about it when I'm not working. And like anything else in life, the more you do it, the better you get at doing it.

Exile: the Camp NANOWRIMO project, Part 1

It stands out in my memory as the first time I went into a store specifically to buy a notebook for a specific purpose. I was driving from Boulder to Littleton. It's a long drive. I took HWY 93 out of Boulder to Golden. In Golden, I got on 6^th, and then took a small jog to Colfax staying there briefly. I went through Morrison, got on C470 to Bowles, maybe, I can't really remember. All I know is that I lived in Boulder and I worked in Littleton. It was on this long drive that I first conceived of a story that consumed the whole drive. When I got to work, a franchised picture framing outfit in a strip mall, I went into the Kmart next door and bought a notebook. It was a cloudy day, I remember that much. It was the spring, late April or early May 1993.

I can't remember much more about all of it. What happened was that I started to write this story in a spiral notebook since this was still three years before I discovered the composition notebook. Shortly after I began to write this story, I left the frame shop and started working at the Health Department. I wrote on this story at work, if I can admit to it. I wrote a lot during the two years I worked a the Department of Health. It was a very boring job and no one seemed to check up on me. I loved writing there because it was without distraction and I really felt like I was getting away with something. And the story I began while on a drive from Boulder to Littleton, I later named The Exile and for years I considered it a novel.

Four Kinds of People

 During my commutes in San Francisco, I began to order the world around me. More aptly, I began to order myself within the world around me. I also started to think about my family, those who are gone, and the ones that remain. I started to think about old friends, again those who are gone and those who remain. I started to think about all the jobs I've had over the years: picture framer, screen printer, lumper, lightbulb changer, clerk, Boy Scout, soldier, waiter. I spent twenty years either waiting tables or tending bar, a job I liked ten percent of the time. It's also where I was the most exposed to people and for better or worse, how I formed my opinions on the nature of people.

In 2019, I spent the year thinking about higher laws, things that were the answers and discoveries to my questions. I spent the year with smaller distilled topics, things that where inspired by the things I read (Emerson and Thoreau), my life with the Boy Scouts, or general anecdotal observations that warranted research. I did not think about people, not really.

Sixty Eight Degrees and Sunny

There was something magical about Denver International Airport from the very second I got there the other day. There was construction everywhere and despite it being a Sunday morning before six, the place was buzzing with people and activity. I walked to Concourse A and went through the security line there. I was on a flight on Concourse C, but I always walk through security at A. I've been doing it that way for nearly thirty years.

I was awash with memories in DIA. I always am. The place has a specific smell that I do not know in other airports. In fact, I think each of the concourses have their own smells too. As I walked toward that first concourse, I felt happy, elated, excited. Not really the feelings one my age has about airports. In fact, I think most people do not care for airports. But for me, I felt giddy, like a kid.

Painting Faces, a June Ch

 

Richard Brautigan, revisited. An Update

I've been dutifully rereading the entire Richard Brautigan cannon like I said I was going to do. I had made the decision to see how much I've changed since first reading all of these books twenty years ago in 2003.

I have my ideas, of course. I was so absolutely crazy for these book twenty years ago. It's important to know that when I start to read a writer, I will read everything I can by the writer. This has been the case with John Steinbeck, Kurt Vonnegut, Haruki Murakami, Elie Wiesel, Dashiell Hammett, Kazuo Ishiguro, to name a few. I have been know to read a dozen books by an author back to back. Once, I spent a whole summer reading eight books by the Bronte sisters. Needless to say, they tend to blur together.

Even now, having read in chronological order: A Confederate General of Big Sur, Trout Fishing in America, In Watermelon Sugar, The Abortion, The Hawkline Monster, Willard and His Bowling Trophies, Dreaming of Babylon and the poetry collections The Pill Vs the Springhill Mine Disaster, Rommel Drives Deeper into Egypt and Laoding Mercury with a Pitchfork, I am making very startling discoveries.

Discovery number one, I am older now that Richard Brautigan ever was. He died a DIY in 1984 at 49 years old. Discovery number two, when I initially read these books I was the age Brautigan was when he wrote many of them. Discovery number three: in 2003 when I read these books, I was not in a good way. I do not remember this particular time of my life with much clarity. I read these books during the first year I was with my ex-wife. For the first half of that year, she was living in South Dakota and I was in Denver. We saw one another every two weeks. For much of that time, I was smoking a great deal of weed and drinking heavily. I was tending bar at a very fashionable place. I was having a great deal of fun, even if I wasn't very happy.

For whatever reason Richard Brautigan fit in with the time for me. I have no idea why. I just remember liking the books. They are all written in very short episodic chapters, perhaps that's the reason I like them so much. Who knows?

What I do know, twenty years later, these books do not hold as much of an allure for me. Are they still worth reading? Yeah, maybe, especially if you're a little younger. Should a writer read these books? Again, maybe. I really doubt that a writer like Richard Brautigan could get anything published these days, much less twenty.

I am not done with the Richard Brautigan journey. I have those strange little volumes that were published after his death, which I may or may not read. I also have So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away, his last book. This book was my favorite of all that I read back in the day. I have always held this particular book in very high regard. It's not like I'm saving it. It's more like I want to digest what I've already reread before moving on. Who knows? I do know that of the other books I've read this year in addition to all of these, many of them are books I've been meaning to read for twenty years. I've been enjoying these books. I've been enjoying reading. Do I still love Richard Brautigan? I don't know. But I agree with him when he says “The night turns long when love sours.”

Smartphone Photos: A reflection of a creative challenge

"Silly" day 16

When we started the May creative challenge, I don't know whether Kimberly or I had any idea of where the project, and the process, would really take us. Over the last several months, Kimberly and I have participated in a number of these challenges: Inktober last October, a drawing challenge in January, a watercolor challenge in February and a storybook challenge in March. I suppose each one of these has given each of us some insight into our process as well as our artistic prowess. It's also very fun to see what the other will do. In many ways, this challenge was just a continuation of all the challenges we've been doing together since last October. However, I felt like this one was slightly different.

This one was somehow different, I think because of the nature of the medium. Being a photo project was one thing. I think that photographs represent life in a very realistic way. We also chose to use our phones as the tool for this project. All of the photos I took during the challenge were made with and edited with the phone. I did make a few other edits at least to a handful of photos with Photoshop. I suppose that could be considered cheating. The photos I tinkered with in Photoshop I felt really deserved the second set of edits.

Sample Pages from My May Photo Challenge and Book

 

Cameras and Film

My new photobook. See it here.

The Cameras of my Photobook

Holga 120N

I see the world differently when I have this camera around my neck. I’m different. Over the years when I’ve taken this camera out on photograph hunting excursions, it’s generally just the two of us. I do not bring a phone. I do not bring another person. In this situation, It’s just me, my focus and attention and the world around me: the one I see and the one the camera will record.

Holga 135BC

There are many merits to the Holga 135. I don’t really know what they are. 35MM film is easier to procure and easier to develop than the 120 film my other Holga uses. It’s cheaper film too. For me, that’s where the good times end with this Holga 135BC.

I have lost a few rolls of film in this camera over the years. It can barely take a 24 exposure roll. A 36 exposure roll will almost without fail get torn in the sprockets. And no matter the length of the film, if it sits in the camera for too long it will tear. This is probably just a problem with this particular Holga. Needless to say, this camera is not one of my favorites.

I’ve had a few great exposures with this camera, and it does really well with double exposures.

Vivitar PN2011

Vivitar’s PN2011 is by far, the worst camera I’ve every used. Superficially speaking, this one really should be my favorite: it’s small, focus free and very light weight. I also think the “panoramic” feature is very cool. It isn’t a true panoramic camera, all it does is remove a little from the top and bottom of the exposed frame. What I really like about it, of course, is that I bought it on a half price for blue tags day at my local thrift store. It was originally marked to be sold for a buck and I got it for fifty cents.

I know, however, many of my issues with this camera could have been solved if I had been more diligent about the film I put into it. I don’t remember what film I used. I would think that a very slow speed film and the bright sunny day would have fixed many of the exposures. However, that way not have been the case because there are incidents of my having taken two pictures of the same subject back to back and one came out and the other didn’t.

I took this camera with me on a little bikepacking tour I took with my buddy Chris. The camera was a secondary element to the trip and not a bad complement. The real focus (partial pun) was spending time with Chris and riding bikes.

Pentax K1000

Of all the cameras I've ever had, this one is by far the best. This is possibly because this is the only real camera I own. Despite my preference to toy cameras, this camera is an entirely different experience. No matter what I point this camera at, it records the exact thing that I see, I image and it makes the world appear as it should be.

The only real drawback is the weight.

There is no digital camera that can give me the same feeling this camera gives.

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.

The March Creative Challenge: Dérangé Désir: the process

As I got deeper into the March creative challenge, I assembled all the drawing I had made that I would use for my mini comic and marveled at how bad I thought they were. I wanted to keep the feeling of the hand drawn images, even if they were rudimentary.

The first step was to render the drawings digitally. I'm sure I did this the most inefficient way possible. I simple scanned each drawing and made them into a .pdf. Then I opened the .pdf in Illustrator. Once in Illustrator I took a few different approaches, but the end result was a much cleaner version of what I had drawn. Now, if I had a digital sketch pad, I could have simply drawn them digitally to begin with.

The March Creative Challenge: Dérangé Désir, the preliminaries

It was no surprise coming off the February watercolor creative challenge that Kimberly and I would do another challenge for March. We looked at a few official challenges. Then we talked about something that both of us had started and that needed finishing. Kimberly had a illustrated book she's been working on for years. I had a mini comic idea with a few rough drawings. We decided that we would complete a story book.

I had made a few drawings that I had the notion to make into a mini comic. Years ago when I first started this project, I did what I could and waited for my tools and know-how to catch up with me. This is a dicey thing to do because this often means that a given project would not get done.

My journey has not been unique. I was a writer for years. I had made the decision to be a writer. I sought education to do. I practiced and practiced and in many ways, I'm still practicing. It was no different when I wanted to be a photographer and later a graphic designer.

When I first conceived of Dérangé Désir, it was a comic. I wanted to draw a comic about two people who decided to run away and hideout in the desert. I have no recollection of why I wanted to do this. I made a series of drawings that were not much more than doodles and then I put them into a folder and forgot about them.

What I conceived for the project was inspired by a zine series I did during my last semester at Front Range. I made 8 issues, each with eight panels. During the process, I had to follow the criteria of the assignment. I used Illustrator. So when it came to Dérangé Désir, I decided that I wanted to render my drawings digitally and manipulate them with Illustrator.

Higher Laws: Compassion Part IV

Estes Park, Colorado is one of my favorite places. On the surface this probably sounds fantastic coming from a guy like me. After all, Estes Park is one classic “taffy town.” You know those taffy towns because they have more ice cream and taffy shops than seem possible, with one of these installed every block, sometime two to a block. Estes Park is at the gates to Rocky Mountain National Park and the Stanley Hotel is there too. It's overrun by tourists all summer long and it has the proper amount of hotels, motels, resorts and the amusements to support it.

Why do I like it? Good question. I think the best part of the place is the way the light looks. It doesn't look like Colorado to me. During the day, and it doesn't matter what time of day, it looks like it's mid-morning. The light is soft, which is unlike the rest of Colorado where the light is searing and white. Remember when you were a kid drawing your house with crayons, the little peaked house with the chimney and smoke? Was the sun you drew yellow? If it was, you do not come from Colorado. Our sun is white, very white and the light it produces is also very white. The exceptions to this are during overcast days and days of wildfires. I don't know why the light is the way it is in Estes Park, it could be from the geography, who knows? But it's what I like about the place.

Higher Laws: Compassion Part III

I've been thinking about the world in which I live in a great deal lately. I think namely because I'm somewhat distressed and somewhat 'I told you so' disappointed. The latter is tough because I am not an 'I told you so' sort of person. I try not to lay blame. I'm more of a 'I didn't see it go down like that' sort of person.

This is what I mean, we are in the midst of a conservative backlash right now. Not just us, I mean, much of the world. I don't get it, I don't want to get it. Daily I see the rights of many of my fellow world citizens being taken away. I'm especially concerned about women. I'm concerned for any population or group that is, or has been marginalized. I fear for these people. I also acknowledge that I am a white, straight, educated male living in modern America. I feel very fortunate.

The February Creative Challenge: Watercolors with Kimberly

I admire my friend Kimberly. I think she's an inspired artist and I often aspire to be more like her. She has this uncanny knack of making little doodles into very cool pieces of art. She pays me compliments on the things that I'm doing, and just knowing how she feels about my work eases my insecurities a little.

We first did the Inktober challenge back in October. We did the prompts independently and then took a pic and sent it to the other. Inktober wanted us to post a pic of our work and post it to social media. We just posted it to the other. I got to know myself as an artist better during the challenge. I got to know her a little better too.

On Gift Giving and an Experience

I have way too much stuff. I know it's too much stuff because there is no way I can justify it. I guess I keep a lot of the stuff that I have because I figure it's better here than in a landfill. Sadly, if I could flip a figurative match over my shoulder and walk away, I would.

There was once a literal match. When I was a young man, a college student, I lived through an apartment building fire. That was a long time ago, and I'm still a little skittish around fire. I do not allow candles in my house. The fire left me homeless with only the clothes on my body. For years after that incident, I did not have much more than I did on the night I crawled out of the fire. Years later, while still working at summer camp, I marveled that everything I owned, including my bike, fit inside my 9' x 9' tent.

Am I Interesting?

I never thought of myself as being an interesting person. Over the course of my life, I have done interesting things, I've read interesting books and I've been both delighted and disquieted from interesting thoughts. I often think about dinner. When it comes to dinner, there are just so many ways you can cook something: you can fry it or broil it or boil it or bake it. The real trick to dinner, plainly speaking, is to search out those raw ingredients which delight the finished project.

My background is writing. I made the decision to become a writer on a sunny day in November. I was with my penpal, before we became penpals. She asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I didn't know. When I asked her, she said she wanted to become a writer. “Me too,” I said. “I also want to become a writer.” Perhaps I only became a writer to impress a girl.

Being a writer, for me, was a great way to experience and express myself in the world. If I met an interesting person who worked an interesting job, I would always ask questions. I've met flour millers, radio personalities, air traffic controls and once a sex worker turned tarot card reader who had so much to say that I'm still thinking about the conversation.

Higher Laws: Compassion Part II

I don't need to tell anyone in this country how hard it is to communicate with 50% of the people you meet. I have people in my family who voted Trump. And since that statement pretty much means that I didn't, you can only image how it's been. We think the other is either misinformed, stupid or trying to destroy the country. Am I right? Both sides see the other as the enemy. I will not spout off my beliefs because it doesn't matter. I don't want to lose half of you right now. And the half I don't lose, I don't want to add to your flames. The truth is it's hard to have any compassion for either side.

These last few years no one seems to be listening, no one seems to want to listen. No one is talking and coming to middle ground, rather, everyone seems to raise their voices. Nothing gets done.

As a point of reference here, I work in the service industry during the administrations of George W. Bush, Barrack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden. I can tell you that the tips were higher, generally speaking, during the democratic years. Incidentally, having to hold my tongue happened the most during the Trump years. Too many people thought that I was a good sounding board for all sorts of stupid shit, after all, if I was rude, I would not get a tip. My whole frame of political culture in America is as a waiter, and there is no refuting that. I still believe that servers can tell you the health of the country with a great amount of precision.