Thawing after the ice storm. Orient, Oregon. February 9, 2014.
Just a quick one I threw together yesterday… An opportunity to familiarize myself with some of the Premier Pro CC changes, to do some side by side work with some different cameras (used my lousy Android phone for some of these shots), and to play with some more complex audio mixing than I’ve done so far.
November 2 and my word count is zero. Yep.
And I’ve been planning on writing a blog post about NaNoWriMo 2013 for about a week now…
Well, we all have to start somewhere.
In a sense, though, I have started because I am taking the rebel route this year and finishing the book I started last year instead of starting a new one. Because of this, I am not going for a “win” this year with 50,000 words.
And I am not even setting a goal of finishing my book.
So why even “participate” if I am not really participating, if I am not even setting any goals?
Because, to me, one of the primary purposes of NaNoWriMo is that it gives aspiring writers a framework to build solid writing habits, and this is something I am in terrible need of this year.
I’ve been a professional writer for years, but it has been technical writing. Honestly, I find it difficult to even call that writing. Most of what I do in that field is layout design, photography, and cutting and pasting. But I’ve always considered myself a writer, it’s just been many, many years since I’ve actually done any real writing.
Last year, during my first NaNoWriMo, I finally felt like I was coming home to the craft I’d been neglecting for far too long. I was writing fiction for the first time in over a decade and I was writing a lot and almost every day. I was building all those good habits I’d been neglecting for so long: daily work, writing even if I wasn’t in the mood, working through blocks and deadspots, staring down the smug cold stare of the blank page and making it my bitch…
It felt good. And the community of writers online, who were all in the same place I was, going through the same things I was going through, added just enough encouragement to get through the tough spots. Writing is usually a very solo and sometimes lonely art, and I loved the community feel that NaNoWriMo (especially the Portland Facebook Group) brought to the experience.
In 2012, things went great. I jammed through my 50K and finished somewhere in the mid-60s. I didn’t finish the book, which was a goal, but it was firing along nicely and I was still working. Then, in mid-December, the next big project came along and I had to set the novel aside for while, but I was fired up and knew that I’d pick it up again, soon.
Then another project, then another project…
In the spring, I decided it was time to get back to work. My break had been long enough that continuity was going to be an issue, so I was going to use NaNoEdMo (Novel Editing Month) in March to re-familiarize myself with the draft so far and get some red inking in to prepare for Camp NaNoWriMo in April… Life got busy, more photography and video projects came rolling through… No editing, no writing… Not even any reading.
And now it is November again, and here I am.
So I will be a renegade in 2013. I will participate this year, but I will have different goals, and the primary one is to build better writing habits that are sustainable while working on other projects. Because of this, I do not want to drop everything and jam through to 50K or even just the end of the book, if that is (hopefully) closer than 50K words away.
I fear that if I set that goal and saw that it was unattainable that I would just bail on November entirely, like I did last Spring when things got busy, and that is exactly the opposite of what I want to do this year.
I also cannot drop everything for one project, and with the heavy demands of my family on my time (I am something like the on-site, full time social worker for my extended family, a role that is my “day job” right now), I need to work on making writing a part of my life most days, not just for insane spurts a couple months out of the year. So even if I could drop everything for a mad NaNoWriMo rush, doing so runs counter to my goals.
A few days back, while trying to find time (see, that is the issue I am trying to fix here) to write this post, an old friend of mine, Mia Marshal posted a great post on NaNoWriMo, about what it has meant to her and on why she is not participating this year.
In essence, Mia explains that “NaNoWriMo… taught me what it means to be a writer.” It taught her the discipline one needs and it gave her the tools she needs and the experience she needs to be a full time, professional writer. However, for her, because she has learned these lessons, now she is in a great place where:
…what I used to call NaNoWriMo, I now just call writing. At some point in the last two years, 50,000 words a month became my new normal, and it’s why I now call myself a writer.
Recently, I found myself in the mind blowing position where I needed to get some business cards printed up for my photography and video work. Not because I wanted them, but because people kept asking me for one. However, at the end of the day, I still consider myself a writer first, so I put that on my new cards, as well.
But Mia boils it down to the brass tacks. I can call myself a writer all day long, and I can consider myself a writer, because I used to do that thing and because I want to do that thing again. But until I can make NaNoWriMo every month, and not a crazy, burn everything except for writing experience but a natural, intergral part of what I do most days, then it doesn’t matter what is on my card or in my heart, because I am not doing the thing that I am claiming to do.
So my goal for NaNoWriMo 2013 is not a word count. My goal this year is to develop the discipline and tools I need to make writing a regular habit, a near daily part of my life, whether or not it is writing 1,667 words per day or not. And yes, I do want to finish last year’s book. But, if I succeed in my goal, it doesn’t matter if I finish it by the end of November or not, because I will finish it. And I will edit and rewrite. And I will start working on the next one after that.
A few years ago I started posting a Photo of the Day on Rubble. I stopped doing that a little over a year ago, because I felt that I’d achieved my goals with that project, which was forcing myself to work on photography every day.
As I wrote when I ended the Photo of the Day:
When I first started the POTD on February 13, 2011, I was in a very different place in life than I am right now. I was in a rebuilding phase and, as a part of that rebuilding, I wanted to put more focus on photography as I moved ahead in life.
Well, if the main goal of the project was to inspire me to take more photos, that is a mission accomplished.
Beyond accomplishing the goal of taking more photos, it also made me a better photographer. When I started the POTD project in early 2011 I was someone who enjoyed taking pictures. Almost three years later, I am going pro, and a big part of that is because I work on it every day in one way or another. At this point, I don’t need an artifical framework to force myself to do this. It now just who I am and what I do.
Starting a similar process with my fiction writing? That is my goal for NaNoWriMo 2013.
It is November 2 and I still haven’t re-read my draft from last year, so that is where I am starting. Organizing my notes and re-reading the existing draft. After that, I’ll either continue working towards finishing that draft, or I’ll start a complete re-write, depending on what I find over the next few days. Either way, it will be a little time before I break zero on my word count.
But this is good. Because I am doing it and not just thinking about it. It’s been too long since I’ve been doing and not just thinking about it, and I look forwards to getting to know my characters again. I’ve been away from them for far too long and, I promise, it will be different this time!
For the last year or two, I was posting these sorts of posts on my Rubble blog. However, over time my plans for these blogs have changed and evolved. At one point, Rubble was going to be my blog for all things arts oriented and this was going to be my blog for personal stuff, whether it was posts about family oriented issues, pictures of the kids, or just self-indulgent navel gazing.
I suppose that over the last year, I’ve come to realize that posts like this one are probably more in the self-indulgent navel gazing category rather than in the arts category.
Well, that may be a bit harsh. But as my artistic and professional life has evolved over the last year or so, so has my plans for these blogs. I was originally going to write a series of articles on my son’s special needs and dealing with life with a son with ASD and other such things for this blog, but I really don’t have the time now to do such a thing (oh, and it also turns out that ASD was a mis-diagnosis).
So one reason to move these posts from Rubble to SE2 is so I’ll actually have stuff to post here! But still, they are more personal and I want to, from here on, at least, keep Rubble for other sorts of less personal posts.
This is a long term documentary video project. Just getting started…
See more here:
https://www.facebook.com/RecreatingTheHistoricColumbiaRiverHighway
Tracing the original route and history of Oregon's Historic Columbia River Highway from Troutdale to The Dalles.
from tag Gorge
Overall, family needs have taken much more of my time than I'd hoped the last few weeks, so I was not able to do much with NaNoEdMo last month and Camp NaNoWriMo is looking like a pass this month, too. I'll get to my novel, but now is apparently not the time for me to be finishing the darn thing.
I've got about a week to finish my next Genero.tv video and then I may have a little video project on deck after that one. We've got to re-launch the house hunt. We've got a lot of work ahead with the boys over the next month or so as we finalize some plans for their education next year. And life, unexpected, will continue to show up in both exciting and wonderful or disappointing and ugly ways, depending on the day...
So, that's what's going on right now...
Taking this down for now. Maybe things will change later this month, but for now? Maybe one of the later sessions this year.
from tag NaNoEdMo
from tag Genero.tv from tag production from tag NaNoWriMo
Forgot to set my clock for the time change and now my computer is running slow. Annoying morning. Rushing to get out the door for church (or not) and, later, an old friend’s memorial service.
But I wanted to take a few minutes (precious minutes) to pause and take stock for a minute…
Finished my Dead Can Dance video last week. A LOT of hard work went into that, all during a very hectic time in my life. I am proud of it, but I know that it is not what it should be.
At first I was very relieved that it was done and I was looking forward to being able to really take some down time and to re-focus my attention on some family issues (the little one is having a pretty rough time right now and, of course, part two of the great move…) and on still photography and writing…
This was supposed to be the first time since mid-October when I didn’t have a big project deadline hanging over my head and big ticket life stuff going along at the same time.
Of course, there is still the whole chore of getting a house, but we are taking a time out from that endeavor to focus on getting stabilized as a family after all of the big ticket items going down since November.
However, with my video, at the last moment I realized that it might not be eligible to win because of the sculptures I used in it. It was all public art (or visible from the street, at the very least) and I thought that it would be all right to use those images without releases. However, a closer look at the fine print, and it might not be.
So, if my video is selected as a finalist or as the winner, there may be a crazy 72 hours running around trying to get clearances for the sculptures in the video. However, unfortunately, I don’t think it is going to be an issue.
I wanted to spend a lot of time working on the editing for that piece, and it ended up being a last minute rush job because real life intruded heavily the week before the deadline. I sort of feel like I submitted a first draft, not a final draft.
Because of these two issues, I am left feeling really unfulfilled after all of the work I put in.
Genero has another video project up, though, that I would really like to work on. I can use a lot of footage I shot for the Dead Can Dance video, shoot a little bit of new stuff, and bang this one out pretty quick with proper time to edit the thing.
In some ways, it will feel like a re-do of the Dead Can Dance video. Not really, because it will be exploring slightly different themes, so maybe it is more like a follow up?
Considering all the unused footage I have left from Dead Can Dance, some lessons learned while working on the DCD piece, and the fact that it is a shorter song, this should be a project I can knock down without disrupting our lives too much between now and the April deadline.
And it doesn’t feel like a big crazy deadline project because of this, though there will still be a little bit of dropping everything and running during the three or four days of sunshine we have between now and the deadline. Need more time lapse footage!
Of course, it does look like I am allowed to re-tweak the Dead Can Dance video and re-upload it. The deadline is met, but I can still modify the thing, apparently. However, I need a couple more days distance before deciding whether or not to spend a crazy 24 hours or so re-cutting the damn thing.
Pretty much I feel like I’ve done the work I can put in on this one and that it is time to move on, though if a couple small changes might help it, then maybe… However, I am not going so far as to take the worrisome sculptures out, because that would involve re-thinking the whole video. I could do this, but it would not be the video I wanted to make at all.
Then there is the writing. After the two big video projects (One Day On Earth and the Dead Can Dance video), I need to get back on finishing the first draft of my novel!
A plan has evolved. First I will re-emerse myself in the novel through this month’s National Novel Editing Month, and then I will finish the first draft during April’s Camp NaNoWriMo.
This is something of a change in direction for me. I haven’t looked at the thing since the first week of December or so, so I knew I’d have to go back and at least read the draft I have so far, but then I discovered that a group is running NaNoEdMo this month (National Novel Editing Month). My first reaction was that I did not want to get bogged down with editing the first 2/3 of the book before I’d written the ending…
Yet, since there will have to be some reading this month anyway, and that will be accompanied by some red inking and notes… So yes, I do have a fair amount of editing to do this month, one way or the other, before I feel comfortable resuming the actual writing.
A late start, yes, but NaNoEdMo is on. I am still setting this up, but I know this so far. There will not be any attempt to reach some crazy goal. I am not going for a “win” here. I will try to get to the end of the draft with a bunch of red inking and some minor notes, and that is about it.
So why participate in the first place? Well, NaNoWriMo was a wonderful experience where I could interact with other people who were having the same experience I was with their artistic efforts. I haven’t had that sense of community with my last two project and, well, I miss it.
Sure, I post a lot of crazy manic stuff about my projects on Facebook, but no one there really can relate (or cares that much, let’s be honest!). But with NaNoWriMo, people did relate because, in those forums, they were all going through the exact same thing…
This is all in prep for the April Camp NaNoWriMo, and I’ll be using that venue to finish the damn book. This is cool because, unlike November’s NaNoWriMo, this event has variable goals, and I can set them to meet the projected length of the novel.
Right now I am aiming for 110,000 words. That will involve some significant cuts during NaNoEdMo and a rather economical run to the end of the novel. I am worried that it will be hard to fit it all in in 30K words, but there may be up to 20K that I can trim (10K is more likely) this month.
So, I am looking at up to about 50,000 words to churn out in April, but I think it will go quickly, once I am settled back into the world of the book and, from where I left off to the end, everything is practically written in my head already. It is just a matter of banging through to the end.
NaNoEdMo: http://www.test.nanoedmo.net
Camp NaNoWriMo: http://campnanowrimo.org
Dead Can Dance Video: http://genero.tv/watch-video/35247
Olafur Arnalds Video: http://genero.tv/olafurarnalds/
from tag Genero.tv
from tag production from tag NaNoWriMoThe plan for this year is to pretty much enter everything… Submit, submit, submit!
In California, I had some issues with one of my email accounts, so I am slogging through three months of old email this morning, and I found two opportunities that I am very interested in.
Of course, I am too busy to actually read all the details right now, and with Snip.it dead, I guess I am stuck posting them here for review later…
While working on this year’s One Day video, I started thinking it would be very nice to start working on some real music videos. Look what washed up this morning… Perfect?
I’ll look into this more later to make sure, but I think I found my next project.
Dead Can Dance | Make the music video for 'Children of the Sun' | Genero.tv:
Dead Can Dance want you to make the music video for their song Children of the Sun off Anastasis their first studio album in 16 years.
They have left the brief wide open feel free to be creative in your interpretation!
Deadline for submissions is 4 March 2013, 23:59 GMT time.
I have looked into this one less, but just off the cuff it looks like something else that is a good match for the type of work I am wanting to focus on right now, playing with abstract-ish images in a more calculated, planned way…
Blue Sky Announces "The Optical" Call for Entries:
We've all had the experience of looking at a photograph and not being able to decipher it right away. We ask ourselves "What am I looking at?" Photographer and collector Allan Chasanoff became a connoisseur of this interval of confusion before the image resolves. He found a visceral pleasure in confronting an image that refused to make visual sense, delighting in its resistance and delighting again when that resistance was overcome - a delicious tension and release.
"To be hit by a dislocation transcends the visual alone, and there is a momentary visceral response. It stuns me. It interrupts the stare and startles me. Thus, a major part of my effort in collecting pictures was to find those that did that. The photograph, the genre, the history and the aura of the picture are secondary to this shock. That is why I collected so-called straight images, for a dislocation in the usual." - Allan Chasanoff
Mr. Chasanoff spent nearly 20 years collecting more than 1,200 of photographs, many of which embodied this optical problem in photography ("the Optical"), and donated that collection to Yale University and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Now he has agreed to jury for Blue Sky a show of your (single-exposure, non-photoshop, "straight") photographs that resist immediate visual deciphering.
For examples of the the type of photos Mr. Chasanoff is seeking for this exhibition, follow this link to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and reference these publications:First Doubt - Optical Confusion in Modern Photography: Selections from the Allan Chasanoff Collection and Tradition and the Unpredictable.
For reference…
MFAH | Collections | The Allan Chasanoff Photographic Collection:
Allan Chasanoff relishes pictures that puzzle him, and he wants others to enjoy these surprises. He built his collection of 20th-century photographs by questioning what occurs when the camera “captures” the real world but the resulting image creates confusion rather than clarity, challenging photography's reputation as a dependable document. In 1991, the New York-based collector donated nearly 1,000 works to the MFAH by photographers ranging from Ansel Adams, Richard Avedon, and Joel Peter Witkin to relatively unknown artists.
Dead Can Dance: Children of the Sun - Lyrics
Children of the Sun is the album’s 'welcome to the show'. The lyric addresses human evolution and how our genetic code is infused with ancient memory, right up to the present, celebrating nature – the Woodstock generation’s legacy.
…
We are ancient, as ancient as the sun
We came from the ocean, once our ancestral home
So that one day we could all return
To our birthright, the great celestial domeWe are the children of the sun
Our journey's just begun
Sunflowers in our hair
We are the children of the sun
There's room for everyone
Sunflowers in our hairThroughout the ages of iron, bronze and stone
We marvelled at the night sky and what may lie beyond
We Burned offerings to the elemental ones
made sacrifices for beauty, peace and loveWe are the children of the sun
Our kingdom will come
Sunflowers in our hair
We are the children of the sun
Our carnival's begun
Our songs will fill the airAnd you know it's time
To look for reasons why
Just reach up and Touch the sky
To the heavens we'll ascendWe are the children of the sun
Our journey has begunAll the older children come out at night
Anaemic, soulless, great hunger in their eyes
Unaware of the beauty that sleeps tonight
And All the queen's horses and all the king's men
Will never put these children back together againFaith
Hope
Our charities
Greed
Sloth
Our enemiesWe are the children of the sun
from tag abstract
Two images tell most of the story…
The first is a countdown on the One Day site for the deadline for us submitting our films. The second is progress on my novel. See a connection?
On top of this, I am not on some sort of artist’s retreat down here is Sacramento, I have a lot of hard work to do to get my mother and I out of here by the time my kids’ winter break is done.
Finally, I have a couple of days’ worth of prep work on some photography contests with an end of the year deadline. I will probably be using pictures from the big August camping trip, most of which I have not looked at since, well, August.
So, a while back I set a sort of deadline for myself… I would like to have the first draft of the novel done by February 1. This is still achievable, even if little work is done until the last two weeks of January.
We have 21 days or so to get the move done. And I have 26 days to get my video done, which should go a lot better than last year’s since I have a better computer to work with and “better” clips shot with a better camera.
It is a much more complicated video, I suspect, than last year’s, and I am breaking it down into segments, the first of which I’ve already completed (long weekend). The only thing really intimidating me about the video right now is how many clips I have to run through and organize, and some untested, by myself, editing techniques that I hope to use with some of them.
And the arts work will be morning and evening work with the days spent working with mom on the move and assorted other issues.
I can do it, but I need to stay focused and I need to remember… The next couple of months will be full of hard work, but the rewards will be tremendous when it is all complete.
Here is the first completed segment for the video, though it may be the last piece to appear in it. I’ll also post it as it’s own post later for my own indexing purposes…
from tag NaNoWriMo
Pretty much the same post I threw up in late October about NaNoWriMo 2012.
Between working on this project and finishing the NaNoWriMo novel (I did get over 50,000 words in during November to “win” the event), I won’t be posting much on the blogs until 2013. Well, I’ll probably throw a thing or two up here on Rubble, but as for the other blogs? Unlikely.
I wanted to do something quick and easy for One Day since the more complex idea a friend and I had will be impossible, since I am in Sacramento and not Portland, but things happen and after doing some planning and discovering that there is a theme for this years event, my idea for this year will be pretty complicated to edit.
Of course, I won’t be filming until Wednesday 12.12.12, but before then there is some prep work, and after there is going to be a whole bunch of editing. And a whole bunch of writing on the novel. And a whole bunch of major life stuff.
So the blogs will remain on hold for the time being.
Yes, this is being reposted everywhere…
One Day on Earth - Film on 12.12.12 from One Day on Earth on Vimeo.
One Day On Earth - 11-11-11 - Gresham and Portland, Oregon (720p) from A. F. Litt on Vimeo.
from tag NaNoWriMo
