Posts published in “Writing”

The Year of 50 Short Stories and 5000 Photos – 6 months on

June 1, 2009 |

About Photography, About Writing, Photography and Writing

Today is June 1st which means it’s time for an update on my progress toward the Year of 50 Short Stories and 5000 Photos. Astute readers will have noticed that I continually update the box on the right side of this page with my current progress as I make photos or write, whether or not I post them here. What you will not know is that I have been keeping a log since January 14th of the progress I make per update. Here is the breakdown for my photographs.

Jan 14	23/5000 (0.460%)
Jan 17	152/5000 (3.040%)
Jan 19	230/5000 (4.600%)
Feb 16	354/5000 (7.080%)
Feb 21	659/5000 (13.180%)
Feb 24	1104/5000 (22.080%)
Feb 26	1202/5000 (24.040%)
Feb 28	1318/5000 (26.360%)
Mar 06	1834/5000 (36.680%)
Mar 07	1904/5000 (38.080%)
Mar 22	2013/5000 (40.260%)
Mar 23	2131/5000 (42.620%)
Mar 28	2206/5000 (44.120%)
Apr 20	2276/5000 (45.520%)
Apr 26	2400/5000 (48.000%)
May 08	2821/5000 (56.420%)
May 09	2919/5000 (58.380%)

You can see that not only has my progress been consistent, but that even early in May, I was beyond the 50% mark before half the year had elapsed. All in all, I think my progress has been appropriate and, frankly, pretty impressive. I’m surprised and pleased that I’ve stayed on track with this. Good job, Joe. Even better is that merely half way through my quota for the year, I can see and feel my photography improving. That is really encouraging and makes me want to get out there and keep making photos. The remaining 2000 (I have some on my camera waiting to be offloaded) should be a piece of cake. I will be interested to see what the final tally will be for the year.

Ok, thats great and all, but what about the other half? Let’s look at the breakdown.

Jan 14	0/50 (0.000%)
Mar 31	1/50 (2%)
Apr 07	2/50 (4%)

Ooooh. Not so good. 4% at the halfway point? Pretty fucking pathetic actually. So what’s my problem? I think I’m being my own worst enemy here. I’m getting caught in creative webs, constantly trying to write brilliant material so that when what’s coming out isn’t sparkling, I get dismayed and stop. BAD JOE! I need to learn from the photos—not every photo I take is brilliant, but every one counts. I just need to put the words down and then worry about them later. Luckily I have 6 months left, which averages out to about 2 stories every week. Totally doable. I just need not to be so fucking hard on myself with the writing and just let it be loose and creative and dark and funny and whatever. Not everything needs to be perfect. I need to remember that.

And with my impending unemployment, I will need to learn to schedule better and make time to be creative for the remaining 48. I can do it.

I will update on my progress when I hit 3/4s on September 1.

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A Life In Art – John Camp

May 26, 2009 |

About Photography, About Writing, Photography and Writing

I think this is an interesting article: “A Life in Art” By John Camp

This is a particularly inspired idea.

Of the successful artists I’ve known, I’d say that the two things that led to their success were compulsion (virtually to the extent of mental illness) to do the work, and the eventual ability to monetize the effort. Most of them never get that success—they’re finally ground down and give it up….

Both suggest that while inborn talent is of some utility, the thing that really determines success in the arts (or any other field) is simply doing it. Gladwell even suggests a standard: ten thousand hours. He suggests that if you work very hard a particular art form—art in the widest sense, including sports, music, law, medicine and so on—that you will begin to reach a mastery of it after 10,000 hours of hard work. That’s 40 hours a week (no cheating!) for five years, or 20 hours a week for ten.

Check it out. Camp has some interesting ideas about what makes an artist and what it takes to excel at your chosen craft, writing or photography or editing or whatever. It boils down, as he notes above, to being a little crazy about it. Food for thought.

But most artists tend to be somewhat reclusive, because of the “compulsion” and “10,000 hours of work” aspects of their lives. They’re not back-slappers, drink-buyers, hale-fellow types.

So selling can be one of the toughest hurdles for a real artist to clear, even those who put in their time, who are doing excellent work.

Hah! I am definitely a “back-slapper, drink-buyer, hale-fellow type”, often to the detriment of my creative pursuits. I guess I have that working for me…and against me.

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Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart

May 21, 2009 |

About Writing and Writing

By page 5 of Absurdistan, I found something that I could relate to.

Alyosha-Bob and I have an interesting hobby that we indulge whenever possible. We think of ourselves as the Gentlemen Who Like to Rap. Our oeuvre stretches from the old-school jams of Ice Cube, Ice-T, and Public Enemy to the sensuous contemporary rhythms of ghetto tech, a hybrid of Miami bass, Chicago ghetto tracks, and Detroit electronica. The modern reader may be familiar with “Ass-N-Titties” by DJ Assault, perhaps the seminal work of the genre.

Those who know me know that I have a secret love for ghetto tech in all its lustrous forms. There’s something magical in its hard-driving misogyny that I find alluring and seductive. Shteyngart’s appraisal of the form is accurate, but for further reading here is the wikipedia entry.

Yet, the more I read of the book, the more I find myself having a hard time with it. The writing is good—very good—but there’s something about it that I find a little off-putting. I know it’s supposed to be satirical, but it feels just a little too self-aware. Is that a bad thing? I don’t know. It’s just that it’s turning me off a little, so, in this case, yeah, it’s a bad thing. The Crying of Lot 49 was satirical and self-aware, but for some reason that didn’t grate on me the same way as Absurdistan does. And really, I just can’t help thinking one thing… Misha Vainberg = Ignatius J. Reilly. Think about it. It’s true.

I have more of the book to go, so I will report back once the book is finished. Who knows? Maybe it will turn around. And maybe it’s just the mood I’m in these days. It’s been known to happen.

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Bram Stoker’s Dracula, in real time

May 4, 2009 |

About Writing and Writing

I read Dracula during sixth grade. Every day we had a period called SSR, Sustained Silent Reading, where we’d sit wherever we wanted and read, silently, for an hour or 45 minutes or whatever. I remember quite clearly (an increasingly rare thing for me) sitting beneath a table on the windowed side of Mr. Williamson’s classroom with the green carpet reading my Penguin mass market paperback version of Dracula, enthralled by its revolutionary (to me, at least) format as a series of journals and letters. It blew my 11 year old mind. It was lush and suggestive, filled with horrors and darkness only ever hinted at indirectly. You never experienced the event as it unfurled, but were left to fill in the gaps for yourself based on what the characters had elected to describe in their writings, what they thought was important, how they felt about things. It turned what can be a very passive arrangement between author and reader into a more dynamic, exciting, interactive experience. Like 1898’s version of the best video game ever, but so much more because you got to do all the work. You were allowed to make the world your own. Indeed, to get the most out of the book, you needed to make the world your own, lest the experience become a disjointed, jumbly mess of conflicting view-points.

Let’s just say that Bram Stoker’s Dracula was important for me as a boy.

Today, Tiffany sent me a blog that is posting the entirety of Dracula as it happens in the book. The novel starts on May 3, and their first post is May 3. Such a cool idea. You can add it to your RSS feed and it will update you every day as the novel progresses.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula

If you get reading it, and find you can’t wait for the next chunk, you can read the entire novel for free on Project Gutenberg.

A side note, a few years after reading Dracula, they canceled SSR which is a real shame. I’m confident that, as grueling as it was sometimes to convince a bunch of post-recess 11 year olds to sit silently and read, those mandated reading periods were instrumental in the development of my love of reading and writing and my supreme respect for the power of words. There probably would never have been The Black Laser if I hadn’t been forced to read after lunch every day. Imagine a world where you delightful people would have no place on the internet to abuse your optic nerves with my black and pink layout. Horrifying, I know.

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Narrative Magazine Spring 09 Short Story Contest

April 24, 2009 |

About Writing and Writing

Matt Toder of the inimitable Steve’s Word sent me this today. It’s a short story competition held by Narrative Magazine. I’ve never read or seen Narrative Magazine, and with the current downturn in the print industry, who knows how long it will be around, but a contest is a contest and who am I to turn down the possibility of earning a little money? So I intend to enter. And since the deadline isn’t until July 31, I have time to write a new piece. What the hell, right? I’m going to try for the full 15000 words. I’ve never written anything that long before; I think the challenge will be exciting. I know that when writing for Hunter I thought I was going to have a hard time getting to 20 pages with my idea, but really I ended up having the opposite problem. I think that Julian & Clive suffered because I was trying to shove so much into 20-25 pages. I ended up cutting a bunch of ideas that probably would have made it better, or at least made the plot make more sense, feel less stilted.

Now I just need an idea.

Anyway, Matt Toder you get the seal of approval.

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02 – Darkness Wails

April 7, 2009 |

Fiction and Writing

The cave stretched out dark and long ahead of the little band of travelers now irretrievably lost. The light of their torch sputtered and wavered in the unearthly gusts rising from deep within the ground. The bottom of the cave was slick with bat guano, moisture, and some slimy substance they tried not to think too much about. Death sat heavy in the hot dark air around them, suffocating, threatening. And then from behind them came an unnatural wail that drove itself through their heads, scraping at the fragile walls of their slipping sanity.

“What was that?” one asked.

“The wind?” another answered.

“It must be.”

“The wind. It must be.”

They knew that it was not the wind. They waited to hear if the wail would come again, but it did not. They continued their trek through the sweltering shadows toward the perceived source of the wind. The wind must signal a way out of this pit, they had reasoned. Where the air moved they would find their salvation. Where the air moved there was life.

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01 – The Biker Kills a Mexican

March 31, 2009 |

Fiction and Writing

The motorcycle purred beneath him as he ripped across the desolate highway stretching off into forever lit only by the single light on the front of the bike. The wind whipped his hair against the worn leather of his jacket, singing the sweet song of freedom past his ears. His beard collected whatever unfortunate insects happened to be in his way on this still, cold Southwestern night. The pistol in his belt felt empowering, assuring, like three and a half pounds of steel confidence.

Hell was in his veins.

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Ouch.

March 18, 2009 |

About Writing and Writing

Oh well. I can’t say I’m not disappointed by this news, but what are you going to do? It’s not fruitful to sit and fret about why I was not selected since there’s no possible way for me to ever know the truth. And, luckily, it was not the only thing going for me. Still, I’m bummed out about it. I don’t feel personally rejected, just disappointed not to be able to pursue something I was really excited about.

I guess there’s always the long shot that they come back to me as potential filler for a longer list if there are still empty spaces, but that’s an even slimmer chance than this was. I’m not even going to think about that.

There is, of course, always next year. I didn’t get into NYU the first time I applied either. Maybe history will repeat itself. Or not. Just got to keep creating, I suppose.

Now, let’s never talk about this again. Well, a few weeks at least.

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