["Open Mike" is the anything goes, often off-topic Editorial page of TOP. It appears on Wednesdays, except on those occasions when Yr. Hmbl. Ed. is running a bit behind himself. —Yr. Hmbl. Ed.]
-
My friends will have to be patient with me. I don't know how aware you are of the universe of discussion about writing mechanics, but it's extensive—writers work hard doing what they do, and they find a myriad of ways to struggle with it. Just the descriptions of how writers work is an endless variety—everyone has to work out his or her own method. Anne Tyler cannot listen to music when she writes; it interferes with her ability to hear the music of the words. Balzac wrote in the bathtub, and when his pen got hot he emerged hours later shriveled as a prune. Hyemeyohsts Storm labored for years on her deeply flawed but also magical monolithic masterpiece ostensibly about plains Indian culture, going so far as to translate it, allegedly, into Lakota and then back again into English; whereas logorrheic L. Ron Hubbard cast off books left and right like my Butters sheds dog hair...and Butters-hair collects in drifts in the corners of the rooms of my house like dry snow in blowing wind.
Anyway one of the key skills of the kind of writing I do is suiting the subject to size, biting off just enough to chew on, neither too much nor too little. As a former magazine editor, I can testify that it's a skill not everyone has.
...And it's a skill I have definitely not yet learned when it comes to the "Baker's Dozen" posts. What I have done recently is misstep twice. First, I asked for pictures from people younger than 29. Turns out very few of those read TOP, which I guess makes sense...we stick with our age cohort. Young people don't identify with a guy whose world views started to take shape in the '70s, which to them is the mythical world that might or might not have existed before anything was actually real, like the 1920s are to me. Then, disturbed that that call for work had so little reach, I overcompensated, and asked for black-and-white pictures. Not further specified, just black-and-white pictures. With which I have been inundated. I might be coming up on a thousand submissions by now. I'm not saying you should stop, because I am greatly enjoying seeing the work; but I've gotten so many submissions that the idea of reducing it all to thirteen pictures has become almost absurd on its face.
My sin is simply that I lack the judgement so far to suit the concept to the scale of that feature. I'm going to have trouble putting together as many as 13 pictures by younger people (although some of the pictures I've gotten are very fine), so that feature might end up with six or eight photographs in it. And then I'm going to disappoint a whole lot of people who sent me superior black-and-white photographs that I won't have room to present. Both of these missteps are my fault, the result of poor calibration between the concepts and the calls for work.
No tooth
My other writing problem this week is that I'm procrastinating over the Book of the Year post. I'm actually not very confident of my abilities as a writer; it's a longtime, persistent character defect of mine. I know what I want to say about it, but I mistrust my ability to say it. I'll get back to work on that, but sometimes writing is like pulling teeth.
...Then again, I recently had a tooth pulled, and it went okay. It was easier than I thought it would be. I just had to face it, and deal.
So you see? This post is 675 words, more or less, and the topic suits the length. Didn't say too much, didn't run out of things to say. I've had a lot of practice. I'm pretty sure I'll get better at the Baker's Dozen posts, too, with practice. In the meantime, as I say, you'll have to be patient with me. And, dare I hope, forgiving. :-)
Mike
Original contents copyright 2017 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
B&H Photo • Amazon US • Amazon UK
Amazon Germany • Amazon Canada • Adorama
(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
Andrew Eckert: "You might not have many young readers, but I'd wager that they take more from TOP than most other online photography resources. I've just celebrated my 32nd birthday, so I don't make the cut for the under-30 group, but I'm still technically a 'millennial,' and I'd count TOP as a major influence on how my approach to photography developed. Then again, I'm probably among the last group of people whose first camera was a standalone object rather than an app on a phone, so even my perspective might be a little dated."
John Camp: "I was a newspaper columnist for a few years, and had to do three columns a week. It was like a very slow death, and I eventually went back to straight reporting with great relief. I honest-to-God don't know how you do this blog thing, especially at your quality levels. Of course, the need to eat occasionally is always helpful in freeing the creative juices.
"As for the black-and-white photos, why not create some subcategories? As you said, reducing a thousand to thirteen is going to be a problem. I can see getting the number down to a hundred, or even fifty, but after that, it's throwing darts. Maybe B&W portraits, B&W landscapes, B&W street, etc. You also buy yourself a few free columns that way...."
[Former Pulitzer-Prizewinning reporter John Camp, who writes thriller novels under the name John Sandford, has well over 30 New York Times bestsellers to his credit. —Ed.]
