Of Twitter and the ordinary

Twitter sparks things. Tonight it sparked this thought: that most people don’t feel the story of their lives is worth telling, that the story of what is ordinary is not anything in which anyone could have any interest. It occurred to me that I don’t believe in the existence of the ordinary.

I used to, and I used to firmly place myself in that category. I still, to this day, disavow compliments with the phrase “I’m only me,” implying that I am nothing extraordinary. I realised tonight, however, that I’ve discarded the idea of “ordinary” as fallacious. Maybe this marks me as an idealist, who knows? Maybe it means I’m finally moulding myself into the shape I want to be. If you want to be a storyteller, after all, it’s fairly essential that you learn to recognise stories.

I never considered my life to be anything extraordinary. The more I think on it, however, the more I realise that it’s had extraordinary moments, and that nobody’s life is comprised of more than that. Some people have more of those moments than others, to be sure. Some people go out and create those moments for themselves, seize upon events around them and turn them into something mad and amazing; some people have those moments happen to them without their conscious interference, victims of caprice and happenstance. But all of us have them, to some degree or another, and it’s those moments that are worth telling. It’s those moments that make a life’s story interesting enough to be told.

My life could be a novel. Parts of it would have to be excised, of course; parts emphasised or embellished, but the story so far isn’t as boring as I used to believe.

Food for thought.

 

And as usual, someone’s doing it better than I.

But that’s okay, because it really is wondrously grand.

This, this, this, this is the sort of thing I need to find, crawl into, and photograph. Found via Neil Gaiman’s blog, a bit wishfully shared here.

Ellen Datlow and Nick Mamatas are editing a new anthology for Tor called Haunted Legends. Even niftier: they are accepting open submissions for it. This is virtually unheard-of. I imagine the competition is going to be v. stiff. Most of the better-known stories and legends are likely to be already taken by authors of the sort that get emails or phone calls saying “please would you write something for this anthology?” rather than the sort I am, which is almost precisely backwards of that dynamic, and involves me hopefully and rather desperately sending off emails saying “please won’t you publish this in your anthology?”.

Despite this, I hear you say, do you honestly intend to write something, edit it into something you wouldn’t be ashamed to use as tinder in a campfire, and send it off, likely only to be rejected as crap?

Yup. I do indeed. Watch me crash and burn, folks! It’ll be a pretty pyre, and I feel fairly good about it all. And who the hell knows? Maybe it won’t be crap after all.

In other news, I am going to try to craft this headphone mod in time for A-Kon. Which may be a moot endeavour, as the Doctor (my iPod) is being a moody, nonfunctional pile of uselessness. I should, perhaps, rename it, but damnit, David Tennant is so adorable, and when I scored the Doctor, it sort of matched the look: affably, slightly deviant looking. Ah, well.

Avanti, y’all!

 

Anatomy of an investigation.

Another example of my splended hackery is up and online for perusing pleasure. Perchance another shall join it after this Saturday.

 

A break in the levee, one hopes.

By God, I managed to write nearly three thousand words yesterday, and the story is still going strong. That’s rare, that is, and needs to be habit instead.

I haven’t written anything in forever, and apparently I am making up for it in one fell stumble. I wrote 2597 words on a piece tentatively entitled Howl, which is a bizarre steampunky sort of thing that I first dreamt and then couldn’t quit thinking about until I wrote it down. I thought it wanted to be a short story but it’s still going and it’s only just started.

I also scribbled 219 words on a horrifying little piece of Poe-esquetry while I was at work last night, beginning in the middle of the story and going somewhere dreadful.

Oh, goody. :D

 

It gets my knees dirty, too, sometimes.

The purpose behind taking pictures is to tell the truth. It’s a different world, if you view it through a camera lens.

Narrow your focus. Distill what you see, so that you really see it, and notice the relationships between your subject and its surroundings. Pay attention to the effect of light and its absence and how it plays along surfaces. Paying  attention changes the world in a subtle but significant way, and the delight in that is that you can share that change with others, via the whirr-click of a shutter.

I am learning. I am no professional– I’ve taken no courses; my knowledge of the technicalities of photography is limited at best, and entirely self-taught, but I’m learning as I do it. I enjoy taking pictures. I enjoy playing with angles and f-stops; I love getting down on the ground or up in trees to see something from a different point of view rather than standing in front of it and snapping a shot at eye-level.

And somehow, through doing this, I manage to occasionally take decent pictures. Somehow, I manage to get some honesty.