Lights 3/52 - Cabaret - River
By JohnU | January 24, 2012
Still working with lighting. Facing some issues, learning bits and pieces, understanding stuff a lot more now than at the start (and it’s only week 3). I’ve actually done a few more cabaret shoots, as well, all one after the other, so I was able to capitalize on the things I learned immediately. Strixx and River were shot almost consecutively, though, so lessons from both get applied going forward.
I’ll soon process the photos for my gargoyle study. And I reserve the right to return to the cabaret at will.
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12-in-12
By JohnU | January 16, 2012
II. The Agony of The End
There’s a certain euphoric sensation that seeps through you when you finish a tale. That moment you write The End, you become emotional soup. There’s relief upon getting that far. There’s excitement, and also anxiety. There’s almost always the certainty that it could be better, and sometimes doubt as to whether it’s good enough. (Hint: it’s probably not; now’s also when you start to feel overwhelmed at the massive revisions ahead.) There’s sorrow. Exhaustion. Elation.
You lean back in your chair and sigh. You call someone, whoever it is you usually call, your spouse or lover or friend or rival, just to tell them the news. “I’m done.” “Really? Congratulations!” Like you’re really, actually done–because you’re not–like you’ve given birth to something–because you haven’t. But you’ve completed the first draft, and that is most definitely an accomplishment. Celebrate. You’ve earned it.
I haven’t.
Yesterday, I completed the first draft of the first novella of this 12-in-12. I wrote END right there, in the place where it belongs. I sat back, I sighed, I made that phone call. Then I asked myself, “What now?”
I always ask that. Do I send the manuscript to a First Reader? Print it and attack with the blue pen right away? Put it aside for a month or two and take it up again with fresh eyes? It’s a powerful question, and there are plenty of good answers. And maybe none of them are wrong; every story will have its own perfect next step. But now, completing the first of twelve, the question has another urgent layer: What now? How do I start the second novella immediately upon completing the first?
(In case you’re interested: the first novella is awaiting a title, though it was briefly known as The Queen in Winter and, also briefly, In The North Country; it’s a noir-tinged fantasy set in motion by memories of upstate New York, Route 9, and a quiet unassuming motel set just off the road; it’s also about a circus, and cats, and poetry; and it’s a story for fathers and daughters, despite that I’m neither a daughter nor a father.)
I grabbed the bits and pieces of two novellas I know I’ll be working on this year, Kings and Ghosts, and sent out a search party to find the notes, character sheets, and bible. (Yes, these are Midnight stories, so there’s much known and unknown about that city, and I’ve got to keep all its details straight.) But I also know I need a day to decompress. It sounds awful. It feels awful. It, in fact, is awful. But I need one day to clear my head before I dive into the second novella.
I’m off to a good start. The first novella took less than half a month. It fell a little short of the twenty-five thousand word goal, but that’s okay. Some will be shorter, some will be longer. I’m also allowing my mind to process other thoughts and gestate fledgling ideas. Because that’s how it’s done. My mind is a mad scientist’s lab, complete with attics, turrets, basements, cellars, secret rooms, and dancing girls. There are clouded mason jars hiding things better left hidden, and some of those jars have been in here since childhood. There’s a massive kitchen with pots of stew bubbling along nicely, sauces that are nearly ready or too thin or in serious need of some reducing. There’s a living room where I keep the various versions of me, past, present, non-existent, and unimagined. We argue philosophy and politics and mathematical theories.
So I’m wandering this labyrinthine chateau, with its pitfalls and poisons and flowers and, like I said, dancing girls, and tomorrow I’ll emerge with the first few words of the second 12-in-12 novella.
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Lights 2/52 - Cabaret - Strixx
By JohnU | January 15, 2012
However, I don’t think it fits the theme as well.
I’ve done four Cabaret themed shoots already, so you will be seeing more. You might call that my mini-challenge for January (even though I did start with a self portrait). After a few of these, I’ll be switching to some inanimate objects and playing more heavily with light and shadow.
The first of the Cabaret themed shots. There were difficulties this shoot. Camera settings were wrong, so there were a lot of blurred shots from even the slightest bit of movement until halfway through when I adjusted settings.
This meant a lot of good shots were lost.
And though this first picture more closely represents my intent, I think the second is a stronger picture.
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12-in-12
By JohnU | January 11, 2012
I. You call this a challenge?
Broken down to 1,000 words a day, the 12-in-12 (12 novellas and/or novels in 12 months) doesn’t seem like much of a challenge. Writers are inundated with advice along the lines of, “Write every day.” One thousand words, ultimately, translates to about four pages. That’s not a lot.
But there’s more to writing than putting the words on paper. There’s gestational periods for every story. Some happen instantaneously. Some spend years knocking around the back of the brain waiting for just the right moment. So to create twelve fully formed, cohesive, intelligent, interesting stories–not just stories, but tales of length and depth–requires a lot more brain juice than mere finger dancing.
And real life is guaranteed to interfere. Illness. Loss of the day job. Loss of a loved one. Failed relationships. Moving house. Power outages. Computer crashes. Uninvited relations overstaying their welcome. Vacations of your own. Some days, no matter how much you try, you find yourself staring at a page filled with the words, “All work and no play…”
You have to accept that the idea that writing every day does not actually mean writing every day. There will be days where you achieve no words, but have instead given your brain a sorely needed (and sometimes well deserved) break from the story. This allows the subconscious to work out details you haven’t figured out. This allows influences from the outside world, influences which didn’t exist yesterday, to help flesh out the sketchy bits.
Some days, you make great progress, type a furious four or five thousand words, burn out the keys of your laptop and erase the prints from your fingers.
Ultimately, most writers, myself included, have a day job that requires a large chunk of time, often forty hours or more, every week. You could’ve spent that time writing. And maybe, if you don’t have a day job, you can spend that time writing, and a 12-in-12 suddenly feels like something quite natural. I don’t think that’s the case, though. It’s still twelve long stories. How many people do you know have been working on a single novel for more than a year?
There are other aspects of this writing game that simply aren’t included in this calculation. Revisions. You can spend as much time making something right as you did making it the first time. That’s okay. That’s normal. That’s necessary. (And for my purposes, while it will happen as I go, ultimately I need only twelve first drafts to succeed.) There’s the submission process, which may include other pieces you’ve done before. Maybe something you’ve already sold will come back for a final galley check before release. Maybe you’ll be invited to write a short story for an anthology. Maybe you’re researching markets one day and find yourself hitting midnight earlier than expected.
I cannot fool myself into thinking this 12-in-12 will be easily accomplished. I know it won’t be easy. I know I’ll face hurdles and obstacles and unforeseeable crises. That’s how writing works. I’ll deal with them as they come. It’s an ambitious goal, so maybe it’s time I explore, in part, why I think I should do this.
I blame my last novel.
For the record, it still needs a title. It resulted out of a previous writing challenge, a month of short stories in April 2010. One of those stories, “Armand Luis Salazar”, begged for more, so that October I started writing the novel. After a month or two, I had one-quarter of the novel written. Then nothing. Nothing for days, weeks, months. I did other things, yes, involving other novels needing revision before publication and short story requests for anthologies, but I’d lost steam on the novel. It required thinking I hadn’t done. It required knowledge I didn’t have. Summer of 2011, I found myself in New England, where I explored Boston for a few days before being locked (I’m trying to make this sound like a burden) in a studio (on the Maine shore) for two weeks (they provided three meals a day and wine). Here, I was meant to write. I was also free to wander, explore, and photograph, which I did. I wrote half a novel–half of that novel–there in Maine, giving me three-quarters of a novel and a very clear direction as to where it would end. But I came back, started a new role at my day job, and moved house. Other stressors popped up. And I couldn’t figure out how to get the book finished. In the end, in a few weeks in December, I wrote the last quarter of the novel. I looked at this stack of papers, and handed it over to a trusted friend. I asked, “Is this really a novel?”
He hasn’t answered me yet.
The point is, I know it shouldn’t take me more than a year to write a single story. Now I aim to prove it.
I have two novellas already planned and started. I’ll get to them. I have one novel partially planned, and contracted; I’ll get to that, too. This past week, I started with a blank screen and a few unconnected ideas, thoughts, and memories, and started something entirely different. In two days, I had almost 10,000 words. Are you impressed? Don’t be. I still don’t know where it will finish. But I’m very happy with where it started, and where it’s been going; and I’m seriously hoping I won’t have to cut a huge chunk of what I’ve already done to re-direct the story to a different place. I can tell you it takes place, or at least starts, in upstate New York, not far from where I went to college. There are snow leopards. Yes, I know, there are no snow leopards in upstate New York. So what? There’s a guy who drinks too much who stops at a motel off Route 9. There’s a diner, a bar, and a circus, and there will be a contest at an inn before it ends. That’s all I’ll tell you now. It’s a start. It’s the first of twelve. And right now, like the novel I finished in December, it needs a title.
I’ll get there.
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Lights 1/52 - Self Portrait
By JohnU | January 4, 2012
Basic key, fill, hair/background light against a black background.
Was all set up to do something else, but the model cancelled, so I pretended to dress up (jeans underneath, I promise) and ended up with a real, solid head shot.
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12-in-12
By JohnU | January 1, 2012
Intro - EMBARKATION
Sometimes, the greatest challenges you face are the ones you present yourself. In the past, I’ve done something called a Novel Dare, in which you attempt to write a complete manuscript in a single month. We usually used April. This was years before National Novel Writing Month existed. I’ve done a 7-in-7, which is seven stories in seven days, albeit first drafts all; and I’ve done something similar (only six stories) with my 6 Nights in Midnight, uniting those tales in a single place.
This year, I’ve decided to take on something a bit more prodigious. Twelve months. Twelve novellas (and/or novels or other books). That’s a lot of work. Aiming for 25,000 words in each, that’s roughly a thousand words a day, every day, without fail. There’s no time for sickness or travel; there are no holidays. There’s only words and phrases and paragraphical alchemy.
Fortunately, it’s a very broad statement, so the books and stories I write to fulfill this challenge can be very broadly based, unconnected, crossing genres, exploring different ideas in different ways. There’s no minimum per month or per day. They can be fiction, non-fiction, fantasy, space opera, romance, horror. They can be serious or seriously flawed. They can be whimsical or brooding, adventurous or melancholic. They can be about superheroes or the girl next door–or ‘the girl next door’, if you know what I mean. There are no limits except those I impose.
There is a deadline, at which time I expect to have a stack of manuscripts to which I can point and say, “Look what I did this past year.” But that’s three hundred sixty something days away. However, the important word here is Deadline. I’ve created one. I’ve imposed a limitation of time. I need to average one piece a month to accomplish this.
I can cheat, too. It’s built right in. I’m allowing at least two prior projects, neither of which was ever completed, to be included, both Midnight novellas that are part of what should be the second Midnight book: Kings of Midnight and Ghosts of Midnight. (The middle novella, Gypsies of Midnight, has been written.) They’re both only a very short way into themselves, and will need to be entirely reviewed and possibly restructured and maybe even rewritten. I’ve also got at least one other novel planned, the third in the DarkWalker series. I have some thoughts on that, too. (I will not, however, include rewrites or revisions or other fixes–only freshly finished first drafts.)
There’s no way I can post the completed pieces on -line–not all of them–not most of them–hardly any of them. This essay, this series of essays, is also a cheat. I’ll chronicle this project, the challenges, satisfactions, frights, and dreams along the way; and this piece, this very one you’re reading now, will serve as the introduction.
What will I discuss along the way? Who can entirely say? I’m not a foreseer of futures, I’m a writer. (Also a photographer, adventurer, and man, but those are separate, unrelated projects.) I suspect I’ll talk about the process, about stumbling blocks and obstacles, about the minor and major epiphanies along the way. I imagine I’ll answer questions, should any be asked–and I’ll likely pose a few questions of my own. I can be very inquisitive.
I’m also ready to begin. No, not just ready: anxious. Not anxious as in full of distress or unease; I’m anxious–desirous and eager.
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Third 52/52 - End of the Line
By JohnU | December 31, 2011
And that concludes the Third 2011 Photography Project.
That concludes them all.
I’ll spend the rest of today cleaning my office in anticipation of the insanely challenging projects I’ve set for myself for 2012.
Photography: Lights
An exploration and study of the use of lighting, primarily studio lighting, which may result in portraits, self portraits, still lives, and other assorted surprises. The first ’set’ has already been established, and I’ve got several models on board for what will hopefully be an exquisite series.
Writing: 12-in-12
12 months, 12 novellas and/or novels. I already know what three of these stories will be (one will be the third DarkWalker novel, in fact). I’ll be updating this space quite frequently on my progress, trials, challenges, and successes as this project progresses. Expect the first essay tomorrow, 1 January 2012.
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Self Portrait 52/52
By JohnU | December 31, 2011
And the 2011 Self Portrait Project comes to an end.
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Portrait 52/52 - Ned
By JohnU | December 31, 2011
The King in his Domain
And the 2011 Portrait Project is complete.
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Portrait 51/52 - Mike
By JohnU | December 29, 2011
This is Portrait 51.
That means all three photography projects have posted 51 images.
That means, on Friday and Saturday, I’ll be posting the final pictures for each of the three projects: the self portraits, the portraits, and the third project.
It also means Sunday starts the new projects. One photography project: Lights. One writing project: 12-in-12. That’s twelve months and twelve novellas (and/or novels). It’s massive, ambitious, a little reckless, and absolutely within the realm of possibility. I’ll be posting about the project right here, at DarkFluidity, as the year progresses. I know two will be previously started (and possibly completely re-started) Midnight novellas, and one will be the third DarkWalker novel. That only leaves nine other complete unknowns.
I will have a busy 2012.
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