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!

 

For a given definition of whimsical…

I have a bad habit of commenting on poor Jeff VanderMeer’s blog entries. (It won me a stack of fantastic books, once, which startled me more than a little.) The following, tangentially related to my last post, resulted from that habit. I’ve cross-posted it here from his blogpost, just because it’s the sort of crap I want to be able to look back on in a few years, turn slightly green and mutter ‘oh dear God what was I thinking’ over.

(Furthermore, as of moment of going to press, it’s moderated, and god knows if it’ll actually end up publicly posted. xD)

It was written on a whim, which makes it, by definition, whimsical. Er.

My hobby has been called by many grim.
The av’rage man, who avoids the macabre,
Shies away, afraid it will somehow rob
Him of humanity: it’s not for him.

I, though: I find those men far too prim.
In monuments to those who live no more,
I find naught ghastly; rather, I find sure
Beauty in the elder stones and the dim

Remembrance, though crumbling stone and rotten
Edifice, image of those forgotten.

…you know, they may be right in calling me a bit on the morbid side.

 

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.

 

Ioughtta.

I’m considering actually purchasing a domain name and putting together a website. It was recently driven home to me (after significant browbeating on the part of those close to me) that I have a pool of talents that I really ought to be honing, refining, and actually doing things with.

I ought to be writing columns more regularly, for example. I ought to be shopping myself out to local and online publications for column pieces, because I know good and damn well I can do it. Perhaps not perfectly yet, perhaps not even well, but at least as well as a lot of what I see in local (and broader) newspapers, magazines, websites, etc.

I ought to be writing fiction more regularly. I ought to be finishing short stories, I ought to be poking about in writers’ groups and getting feedback, I ought to be improving my craft and really doing something with what I know is at least acceptable talent.

I ought to be taking more pictures. I ought to find photography classes that are actually offered when I can take them (a more difficult feat than might be expected, thanks to my schizophrenic work schedule), and I ought to actually learn the technical craft of what I have thus far done with merely an eye to composition and a cobbled-together, basic awareness of how a camera works and what makes a good picture. I take damn good pictures, but I can take better with applied knowledge. I am hungry to learn.

Beyond that: as I do these things, as I learn and hone and refine and improve, I will want to begin sharing what I do with others. I will want to be able to point those interested to a collection of my best work and say to them: see. This is what I have done; these are my accomplishments. These are my talents, distilled. And, if all goes as I wish it, being able to do that will gradually start assisting me in making my living.

I did say ‘assist’, and I meant it. I’m not going to jump up and down here and scream jubilantly to the heavens that I am going to be the next Neil Gaiman or Annie Griffiths Belt (if that happens, though, I won’t complain), but surely it’s not being naive to think that I can at least make something remunerative out of the things I enjoy doing.

Other people do it all the time, after all, and I no longer subscribe to the paradigm that getting what you want is something that happens to Other People. It’s my turn, now.

Anyway, then: a website. I know myself. If I have a portfolio website, I will want to fill it with things. Therefore, I will need to create things with which to fill it. I will need to write more. I will need to take more photos. I will need to actually start doing the things I keep saying I will do, and maybe then…

Maybe then.