The Online Photographer

Sunday Support Group: Strange As Fiction

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An Echo

I never thought I'd be in the demographic for one of these. (Once you get older you start ignoring most trends and fashions, because time has taught you how fleeting and without body and substance most of them are.) But I've ordered an Amazon Echo.

The Echo is the device, the hardware; Alexa is the synthetic humanoid that* listens for your instructions and responds orally. By the way, Echo was originally a mountain nymph in ancient Greek mythology who pines so badly for Narcissus that she withers away until nothing is left of her but her voice.

Really, what could be more perfect during my recovery than, um, a devoted mountain nymph? Hopefully I'll get it set up successfully so that it works entirely by voice command, so I can tell it to start and stop reading audiobooks. Not only that, but I don't even have to buy books—it turns out I joined Audible years ago (I think because my son was an affiliate for a while) and bought a dozen titles that I never listened to. They're still waiting. I'm good.

Mayil in the clutch
When the Harry Potter books came out 22 years ago, I (along with approximately one zillion other people) got the bright idea of writing a series of fantasy/sci-fi adventure books for young adults. I plotted a quadrilogy, four books, and outlined two of them. My stories followed a protagonist named Mayil Daka, who lives c. 2280 in an era that followed 80 years of disasters called The Contractions. During the Contractions, world population had plunged to a mere 20 million souls. Survivors had resumed living and behaving in tribal fashion, retreating into small fortified compounds called "enclaves." As world government began to get reorganized, resourceful individuals, called "travelers," were enlisted to locate and approach these armed and isolated settlements to inform them of the re-establishment of civilization and to try to reassure their leaders that it was safe to venture out and reconnect with the broader society. It was dangerous work, requiring bravery, social skill, and good judgement, and the travelers often became heroes to subsequent generations, as well as founders of larger civilized areas, which are also formally called Enclaves. Mayil (pronounced "mile"), lives in the Praetorian Enclave, formerly part of South Africa.

When the story commences, world population is rumored to be approaching 100 million, and renewed fears of overpopulation are reaching almost hysterical levels among the superstitious; terror of the memory of the Contractions is so strong that parents are allowed to exempt their children from studying it in school. World government, based in the Australs (Australia/New Zealand/New Guinea), has an urgent need to carry out an accurate world census. There is only one octant of the globe that is not served by surviving satellites and is hence "dark"—out of contact with the rest of the world. It's a region that was riven by sectarian violence, dark cults, and strange superstitions in the run-up to the Contractions, and it is known as the lands of the Northams—the former North America. Little is known about conditions there.

World government is mounting a small and most likely doomed expedition to the lands of the Northams to see if a government exists there, and, if it does, whether it has census data that can be added to the projections for the remainder of the planet. The expedition will travel by sailboat across the inhospitably hot equatorial region. Mayil, who is the only great-grandson of the great Traveler Emil Ali Daka, the most legendary of the nine founders of the Praetorian Enclave, has been chosen for the honor of being ceremonially asked to participate in the expedition. At age 14, he is not required or expected to accept; it's merely an honor to be asked, a symbolic gesture intended as a compliment to the people of the distant Praetorian Enclave.

He has every reason not to want to go. He has just entered "clutch," a rite of passage for teenagers wherein 12 young women and 12 young men who have been scientifically selected as genetically healthy enough to have children sort themselves into couples. Clutch is not only prestigious—not everyone is allowed to have children, because of the high incidence of birth defects—it is also very social and great fun.

But Mayil has just lost two of his closest friends. One, Davi Ald, a neighbor boy whom Mayil grew up with, had been chronically sickly and always expected to die. But the other was the apparently healthy girl to whom Mayil had been secretly betrothed since age 10, Mali Ohen, who died unexpectedly of a fast-acting cancer after learning, to her devastation, that she would not be allowed to participate in clutch. Her genetic markers for disease had been just above the cutoff.

Mali's exclusion from clutch had subtly driven a wedge between the two former childhood friends despite their better intentions, and since Mali's death Mayil has suffered from guilt as well as grief. To the great shock of his parents, when Mayil stands in the great Council Hall of the Australs to hear his invitation read aloud, he throws caution to the winds and surprises everyone present—and even himself, a little—by accepting a place in the dangerous expedition to the lands of the Northams.

And off we went. 

Hominids and humanoids
I had fun with it, anyway. The publisher of Harry Potter sent a very nice letter in response to an outline and seventy pages of manuscript: "This almost made it for us! Please keep us apprised of your other projects." Other projects? I didn't have any other projects. I was hard at work on that project. Unfortunately, my next project was to get fired from a job, which threw me into a slow-grinding crisis for several years. Writing was mostly forgotten.

So what's the point of this? I'm sure experts in speculative fiction are well aware of this problem and can limn its dimensions at length, but when the first book opens, in the first scene, Mayil is waking up in his bedroom in his parents' house on the Transvaal plain, and the first thing he does is ask for news from something I called a "conbox," which is voice-activated and can respond to him interactively. The idea seemed at least mildly futuristic to my innocent self in 1999, but my fictional "conbox" was almost identical—in function, but even in size and shape!—to an Amazon Echo. Sheesh.

So anyhow, I got myself a conbox, straight out of the former future.

Mike

*A bit o' grammar: "who" is the proper pointer-word for humans; "that" is the pointer-word for things. Common errors like "the girl that was brushing her hair" or "My friends that have a nice house" are howlers to an ear sensitive to words; should be who both times. But here I think "Alexa" is properly a that, because "she" is not human, but rather humanoid.

Original contents copyright 2019 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.

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Locked Out!

Dennis Ng wrote a comment in the "Oberon" post about how he is finally buying a used medium-format digital back, something he's always wanted. (And congratulations, Dennis. Hope it works out.)

Mani Sitaraman wrote under the same post that he can't afford high-end home audio speakers. [Note: this post is not about speakers. It's about grapes.] Well, who can? The first three entries under "Class A" under the "Loudspeakers" category in Stereophile's once-useful "Recommended Components" list cost $85,000 a pair, $22,000 a pair, and $40,000 a pair, and it goes on from there. But he said he hopes to find a nice pair of Spendor SP100II's in decent used condition one day, and might even be able to afford them.

Have you ever been locked out of something by rising prices? Something you really wanted that seemed again and again to remain just out of reach, like the grapes to the fox in the famous fable*?

Keep-away
Sometimes even if your situation improves, the target moves. I have a friend who used to own a house in a certain neighborhood of Denver. She sold it, and now she can't go back—property prices have risen so much that she can no longer afford to buy a house in the neighborhood she once lived in. Locked out! You know what they say: Oh well.

The same thing happened to me with cars when I was young. I started saving for a car when I was 14. At that time, Volkswagen was running an ad for what it called the cheapest car in America—a Beetle for $1,919. (That's going to make me seem very old to young people.) I had to buy a new car because my father said he would put me on his insurance policy, but only if I bought a new car. But by the time I was 16 and had nearly saved $1,919, the cheapest new car in America—I think it was a Datsun (now called Nissan, and yep, yep, sonny, I'm ancient)—was $2,800 or so. Two years later I had saved something like $2,400, and the cheapest car in America was midway through the $3,000 to $4,000 range.

And so on. I gave up, and didn't buy my first car until I was 30. Before that I took the bus a lot. There was one advantage to that at least—you could read on the bus. I carried a tiny "Oxford World Classics" volume of Walden in my pocket so I was never without it. Everyone—especially every young person, and by that I mean you 30-year-olds and 40-year-olds—should read Walden**.

Mark II = price hike
Mani reminded me of this by talking about Spendor speakers. For me it's a name that conjures magic. When I was in art school I really, really wanted a pair of Spendor SP1 speakers, and very nearly bought a pair for $850. But they were just a little out of my reach.

Damn grapes.

And just as with that first car, they remained out of reach. Now, you can buy a used pair for $1,200 or even less if you're lucky, but speaker drivers wear out—it's not the smartest move to buy 30-year-old speakers. Fortunately, and rather amazingly, a modern remake is available directly from Spendor, the original maker—the SP1/2 (Mark II, in camera-speak). As you can see from this page, the price had ratcheted up dramatically, to $2,750...in 2002. That is, still beyond my reach at that time.

They're still available, but I don't want to know how much they cost now. I already know they're beyond my reach. They've occupied the same relative position now for more than 30 years, so why would anything ever change?

Aesop's lesson
It doesn't matter anyway (see the fox and grapes fable in the footnote again!), because I don't have a place in my house to set up a traditional stereo, with the equipment on a rack in the middle and two speakers on proper stands situated at the proper place out in the room. Besides, I'm happy with my current desktop system, which sounds marvelous and which allows me to enjoy music just fine. (You can see my system in this picture). So I'm able to be grateful for that, and not have any complaints. "Unless I accept life completely on life’s terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and my attitudes."

It's just a feature of "life on life's terms," being locked out. And it'll always be something. No matter how good you have it, you can always identify, and focus on, and aspire to the next level, just out of reach. There's always a next level. All we need to do to cure the situation is change our own attitudes, that's all.

Mike

* The Fox and the Grapes

ONE hot summer’s day a Fox was strolling through an orchard till he came to a bunch of Grapes just ripening on a vine which had been trained over a lofty branch. "Just the things to quench my thirst," quoth he. Drawing back a few paces, he took a run and a jump, and just missed the bunch. Turning round again with a One, Two, Three, he jumped up, but with no greater success. Again and again he tried after the tempting morsel, but at last had to give it up, and walked away with his nose in the air, saying: "I am sure they are sour."

"IT IS EASY TO DESPISE WHAT YOU CANNOT GET."

—Aesop, Sixth Century B.C.
(text from the Harvard Classics via Bartleby)

**It's very much on topic for this post.

Original contents copyright 2019 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.

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Featured Comments from:

Malcolm Myers: "There is also the inverse of this. Things that were unimaginably expensive to me as a teenager became easily affordable as: a.) I grew older and started to earn more money, and b.) things I desired new became available second-hand. I have found this to be especially true when picking up old film and digital cameras from car-boot sales, charity shops. and camera stores."

Joe: "My parents bought a Volkswagen Beetle about the same time you first started wanting one. My father noted that the car cost a dollar a pound."

Benjamin Marks: "I think, responding as a camera guy, 'Leica' comes to mind. Their 35mm cameras were 'unobtainium' for me in college in the '80s. Oh the pain!

"At some point in the mid '90s I bought my first M—a used M3 double-stroke from a camera shop in Oakland, CA, with a really nice 50mm ƒ/1.5 Summarit. I did finally buy a new M8 in the 2000s and then traded it in on a new M9 three years later. But after that, the prices jumped again, and now it's like watching the tail lights of a faster car receding into the distance. I really like the platform (go on, haters...do your worst), but I am just never shelling out $7K for a camera, period.

"Then again, when I was in my 20s, I had a list of camera 'wants' in my head. You know: a Zone IV 4x5 with a matching dual-tube cold light head enlarger, a Hasselblad 500 C/M, a Leica M6, and so on. I could buy all that and be 'done.' I think the magic number was $10,000 in 1988 dollars. Well over the years, I have owned everything on that list, and then some (or: and then, sum). But I still have a mental list, and the magic number hasn't changed much. On the other hand, I can't think of a single picture I haven't taken due to some gear-related shortcoming that existed at the moment of snapping the shutter.

"It brings to mind Spock's (That's 'Mr.' not Dr. Benjamin) quotation about wanting and having."

David Dyer-Bennet: "I've owned a Yashicamat 124G, and a Graflex Norita 6x6 SLR, and the Fujica GS-645, but I think of myself as having been 'locked out' of medium format from the mid '70s until the 2000s (when I went digital) by prices, which kept rising. What that really meant was my perception of benefit didn't ever catch up with my feeling about the price for long enough for me to act; I could have bought used medium-format gear most years in that period with money I instead used for other things. Another part of the problem was that I had 35mm ideas about the range of lenses needed to have a useful system, which ran up the price of medium format as I perceived it. And I did always know that my primary area of photography was recording and documenting things, often rapidly-changing things in dark situations, which is not what medium format is best at."

SteveW: "Buddhist Economics: Happiness = Wealth/Desires

"The greater the desires the more wealth necessary for happiness. And vice versa."

Dogman: "When I was a kid in high school in the early 1960s, I lusted for the Jaguar XK-E. Of course, to a poor country boy it was an unobtainable dream for its new price of just over $5,000.

"In 1977 I paid just over $5,000 for a new Chevrolet Nova.

"Speaking of that XK-E, just after I graduated from college I made friends with a guy who owned a body shop. Visiting him one day I noticed in the back of his shop something under a heavy, dusty tarpaulin. I asked him about it and he pulled the tarp back to show me a 1960s XK-E. According to him the car and its owner were stranded on the highway when he happened upon them. Being helpful, he offered the man a ride and they later returned to tow the Jag back to his shop. At that point the Jag's owner expressed the frustration he had endured for his entire ownership of the car due to its unreliability and frequent breakdowns. He then made a gift of the car to my friend because of his kindness. Unfortunately, my friend found there were so many things about the car that needed expensive repairs he couldn't justify ever fixing it. But it was a beautiful car and he couldn't force himself to get rid of it."

Dave Levingston: "When I was in high school in the middle of the last century I lusted after two cars, the Shelby AC Cobra (the 289, not the ridiculous 427) and the Porsche 911. Both were completely out of reach at astronomical prices around $7,500. Back when I had a portrait studio I used Mamiya C330s and lusted after a Hasselblad 500 C/M, but could never quite manage to afford one. Today I still feel that lust, and I could afford one, but have to admit to myself that I have absolutely no use for one now. A lovely camera, though, it still is."

Mike Ferron: "Locked out? Sure, on high end photographic gear. I love the good stuff but you won't find me in possession it. I shoot 6x6 with a Yashicamat instead of a Rollei. Thirty-five millimeter rangefinder? Olympus RC instead of a Leica. Digital? A secondhand Oly E-M1 with the Oly 25mm ƒ/1.8 as my premier lens. (not a bad lens at all, by the way)."

Mike replies: I wish I were as smart as you are. I'm being serious.

Moose: "Re 'I really, really wanted a pair of Spendor SP1 speakers.' Change one letter—spender speakers.  \;~)>  "

Timo: "Locked out? Sure. There's plenty of examples: e.g., Leica's M offerings, which I've not yet tried in any iteration, or maybe that photo safari to the Amazon or Patagonia or Antarctica; of course such were probably always pricey. But the 'locked out' that really stings is Apple's Aperture being discontinued. The amount of time I've spent trying to figure out how to move on (while still taking at least some of my edits with me) is probably a larger 'splurge' than any version of a (have to look up the spelling) Summilux."

Mike replies: Fortunately for me, I had already learned about Apple's nefarious and wicked habit of orphaning its software before Aperture came out, and I lashed myself to the mast to help me resist the siren song of Aperture. I never fell for it. I sympathize with you, though.

Thomas Walsh: "Like so many others, I wanted that special car or camera or stereo system. And then the concept of opportunity cost set in. Marriage and family seems to intensify opportunity cost and then one is often left rationalizing that those grapes were probably sour."

Mike replies: Below is the placemat I use where I sit and eat three times a day, day in, day out. Amazingly, I had never consciously noticed the grapes, nor the theme! Talk about blind.

I was just sitting there this morning eating my oatmeal, when I thought, whoa, those are grapes—that's Aesop's fox.

alex-virt: "This post reminded me a toast from an old Soviet movie: 'I want to buy a house but have no means. I can buy a goat but have no desire. May our desires always match our means!'"

Sunday Support Group: OC/OL/OY (and Mike's Camera Decision)

From time to time I suggest little exercises—well, okay, sometimes some big ones too—for people to consider. I love learning, and learners naturally teach.

One of those exercises was called OC/OL/OY—one camera, one lens, one year. Here's a description of it on PetaPixel*.

So...it's January...time for resolutions...which I am notoriously bad at keeping...and I'm thinking...well, that maybe I should take my own advice and do a OC/OL/OY.

I've actually done a OC/OL/OY before, several times. Mainly because there have been a number of more-than-one-year periods when I only owned one camera and one lens. In my first year in photography school I only had a Contax 139Q and a fast Zeiss 50mm lens. In Year Two I made the most momentous equipment change of my life and career and sold the 50mm and replaced it with a 35mm and an 85mm. Whew, big change. Brave new world.  :-)

I actually even did a OC/OL/OY with a zoom lens once, too...I purchased my first DSLR, used, in 2006 I think it was, and it came with the Minolta 28–75mm lens made by Tamron that's still available as a Sony lens. (Buy Tamron's own version instead, available for Nikon, Canon, Pentax and Sony DSLR mounts; it's almost half the cost.) I liked the lens so much on the "crop-sensor" camera (in FOV equivalency it was about a 42–110mm) that I never got another lens for that camera. Note that I can only recommend this lens on APS-C—I didn't care for it on FF at the short end.

Mike's camera decision
I decided to unwrap the G9. And keep it, that means. So I've got a new camera. It's not perfect for me (mainly because, ironically, it's just more camera than I need and prefer) but it does have what I need right now—fast AF and excellent IBIS. I bought David Thorpe's book. I ordered an extra battery and hunted down one of my UpStraps.

I sold two cameras and a lens and covered the cost of the G9 that way. It's expensive, but Amazon still has it at the lowest-ever price of $1,212.49. B&H is only slightly higher if, like I did, you prefer to buy from them. That's what makes it better than the Olympus E-M1 Mark II for me—it costs less. For people who are less price-sensitive the Oly might have a little edge. It has a bigger tribe of users.

So what lens would I use for a OC/OL/OY? I have four Micro 4/3 lenses...the 20mm (an old favorite, but one that triggered this little blat), the Panasonic/Leica 45mm Macro, an old Olympus 12–50mm that came with an early Micro 4/3 camera I quickly sold, and my bread-and-butter 12–35mm ƒ/2.8 II. Again, the Oly version might have a bit of an edge, but I like my Panasonic lens.

I don't really doubt that I could use just the G9 and the 12–35mm for a whole year, but...a true OC/OL/OY would mean no iPhone photographs other than just record-keeping, note-taking, and social-media-communication-type snaps for that year. And that would mean having the G9 with me much more than I keep a "good" camera with me now. Can I do that? Hmm.

Well, I probably should. I'm pretty addicted to iPhoney snappery, not always to good effect.

Mike's new camera. Uh-oh, this picture is an iPhone snap.

But hey, challenges are supposed to be challenging, right?

Unless I really commit, my OC/OL/OY won't last more than a month. And I'm not really committed yet. Just thinking about it.

But I'll keep thinking about it.

Mike

*...Which I had never seen before I Googled "OCOLOY" just now. Thanks, Michael Z. and PetaPixel!

Original contents copyright 2018 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.

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Franklin Berryman: "Given your photographic experience, what do you hope to achieve by such a commitment? I mean there should be a goal other than just saying you did it."

Mike replies: Excellent question. I will ponder that, but I think the goal is re-commitment, renewal, re-engagement—a restoration of your involvement; putting gear, GAS, and technical fussing on the back burner, getting out with the camera more, and concentrating on seeing. Sound about right?

Benjamin Marks: "Why not start with OC/OL/OM (one camera, one lens, one month) and see where it goes?"

Paul McEvoy: "On Instagram for musicians (I believe there are other equivalents for other arts) there is a tag #100daysofpractice (and now #1000daysofpractice). I believe the violinist Hillary Hahn started it. Basically practice your instrument every day for 100 days. Generally post a video of yourself doing such every day (the last requirement is sort of loose).

"I’m on day 312 or thereabouts. About 740 hours of practice which very well might be more practicing than I’ve ever done in my life. I’ve gone from an inconsistent 1-2 hours a few times a week to 16-20 hours weekly. It’s been mostly very enjoyable.

"For me the most important thing has been getting offline. I lock my phone in a thing called a kitchen safe for large periods of the day and don’t have other internet access at home. I have another phone I use to make calls. It’s just the damn internet that screws up my brain.

"The other thing is a large wall calendar (now datebook planner for the new year) where I marked down my practicing hour by hour. This made a huge difference in feeling like I was keeping my streak up.

"It’s been life-changing. I have come to just love practicing in a way that as a lifelong musician I never have before. Just consistently sitting with my instrument and exploring, mostly the same stuff day after day and really digging in. Also totally owning being able to record something that’s pretty awful and put it up there knowing it will be better in six months.

"Lately I’m pondering returning to photography a bit with a similar mindset although it’s hard to serve multiple masters."

Sunday Support Group: Try, Try Again

Well, I've failed my resolution. I decided early this year that I was either going to write a book in this calendar year—2018—or die trying.

And I didn't. Write a book, I mean.

But you know what? I'm not going to give up. 

I don't have any excuse for not giving up. I probably should. I'm just not going to. I like to write, and I've been practicing it all my life, and I'm passably good at it. My problem is mental organization—I'm not very organized in my thinking, not very good at following a thread over the long haul. (You might sometimes detect this even in my blog posts, if you're looking look for it.) I have trouble staying on track over tens of thousands of words. 

Human engineering
I took a three-day battery of aptitude tests way back when I was a teenager, administered by an organization that is now called the Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation* (JOCRF). It was very interesting, and I learned some things of lasting value about myself.

To give you one example, I scored very high in all the musical aptitudes, but in none of them did I score as high as people who turn out to make their livings as working musicians. JOCRF told me that people who do score high enough in those aptitudes pretty much have to work in music in some way, shape or form, or they tend not to be happy; but that people like me, people with high but not-high-enough musical aptitudes, who attempt to be musicians usually fail.

I took their word for it, and determined to resist the siren song of trying to be any sort of musician. I decided instead to be a music listener—a devoted part of the audience. And that decision has stood me in very good stead over the years. I'm completely happy with that course I chose based on their advice. 

They also told me that I was particularly bad at foresight—I have no memory of how they tested for this**, but I do remember sitting across from the clinician's desk while he told me that, to me, "the past will be like a lush, intricate mountainous terrain, constantly worthy of exploration, while the future will look like a flat, featureless, uninteresting desert"—or words to that effect. Raise your hand if you've planned for your retirement...and guess who hasn't. 

Salt flats again
And guess what my attempts at book manuscripts look like to me? Lots of richness in what I've already finished, and pretty much no freaking clue as to where to go from there forward. Fascinating terrain behind me, bleak nothingness ahead. I have a hard time writing fiction for that reason. I have no more idea than a reader would what the characters are going to do next!

One thing I did do this year, though, was write what I think are very good first chapters of two different books. I had to work very hard at it, but in both cases when I go back and reread them I think they're not just good, but excellent. So maybe planning writing by chapters is the pathway out of my mental organization problem. I think what I'm going to have to do is write chapters as if each one was a little miniature book all by itself—getting one chapter to a pretty high state of finish, then mulling over in my mind as to where the next one needs to go before starting it. In that way I could build a book chapter by chapter, and thereby overcome my problem.

I don't want to quit, though, despite my ultimatum to myself last January. I want to keep after it. I just haven't got the key yet, is all. It's out there. I'm going to find it. I just have to keep working. I'm going to know when it happens for me, because things will start to flow. Until they do, I'll know I'm not there yet.

I feel like I just need to find what I'm meant to do. Do you know the old 18th century definition of "genius"? It meant the particular, peculiar things that make you you—that make you distinctive, individual, and different. What I need to do is find my genius, in that antiquated sense of the word.

Two-thirds right
By the way, do you want to know what Johnson O'Conner's three top recommendations for me were, back when I was 16? They suggested that, given my aptitudes, I might want to think about becoming a writer, a photographer, or a forester.

Ha! Forester. Two out of three ain't bad.

If you have a child of any age older than puberty who is floundering about in their life course or career path like a fish flopping on dry land, I recommend you treat them to the JOCRF aptitude tests if you can afford it. It's not very expensive—they're a nonprofit—and there are 11 locations around the U.S.

Helped me, I'll say that. And it's interesting, too.

Onward! Maybe I'll actually die while still trying. But really, there are worse fates.

Mike

*It was originally founded in 1938 as the "Johnson O'Conner Human Engineering Laboratory," which sounds maybe a little Frankensteinish to modern ears.

**It's Chapter 13, page 59, of the Foundation's free ebook about its tests, which you can see here.

Original contents copyright 2018 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.

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Paul: "It really hurts me to hear this about your writing. Your blog has become part of my life. Can't you just sit down every day for one hour and just get on with it? Most days your writing will be average, a few will be awful and a couple will be amazing. Those incredible days will refuel you for many days. Stop focusing on finishing it and focus on that bloody hour everyday and things will change for the better."

Mike replies: That doesn't do it though. Works for blogging, not for a book. It's like walking fifty miles in the wrong direction—doesn't matter how brisk your pace is if you're not getting any closer to where you want to go.

Ilkka: "You cannot write a book in a year. Not a good one anyway. That is a too ambitious target. If you didn’t start writing it at all in 2018, then shame on you. You will never write it until you start. But be realistic and give yourself 3-5 years. You need a plan and outline. That can change during the process. Then you need to write. And then you need to edit. But first you need to get started."

Mike replies: Oh, I've started. Have I ever started. It's finishing I have the trouble with. :-)

Rose of Sharon Before and After

The Rose of Sharon bush outside my kitchen window on July
18th. Hard to see at this size, but note single flower.

I don't think I hallucinated this—is there a large photo-centric or photo-heavy social media site that has banned "before and after" pictures? I think it's Instagram. Maybe Facebook? I think to prevent before-and-after weight-loss come-ons. But that might be wrong. Sorry...I can't remember. (Told you my brain is shrinking.)

Same bush 12 days later, July 30th

Anyway, I like before-and-after pictures. One of my favorites was taken in the '90s with a then-antique Spotmatic—two B&W pictures of a pan of cookies before and after baking. Simple pictures. But...tasty.  :-)

As with many photographic ideas, once you start thinking about it and looking for them, more and more possibilities pop up.

As far as weight-loss before-and-afters are concerned, all I can say is that I am all prepared with the "befores"!

And while we are on the subject of things that grow, may I just say how sorry I am that blueberry season is over* and that green bean season soon will be. We've had a wet Summer and it's been a banner year for green beans. I think I've eaten fresh-picked green beans close to every day for the past month and a half. But broccoli season just got going and will be going strong until the first hard frost, so that's consolation! I'm trying to get the Mennonite farmer up the road to let me go out into his broccoli field (two acres) and cut my own. I suspect he thinks I've got a bit of a screw loose, but broccoli oxidizes fast. It's better for you if it's eaten right after it's picked**.

Enjoy your Sunday. I'm off to work on my book about photography, which is going splendidly if I do say so myself. I'm writing it all off the top of my head and just telling stories. Which, it turns out, I have a lot of. And it even includes quite a bit of sensible practical advice, even. Lots of fun to write. I'll enjoy it even if no one else does. Because when you get right down to it, photography should be fun, right?

Mike

*But don't cry for me. A farmer near me fresh-freezes them and sells them out of his freezer all Winter.

**Source: Eating on the Wild Side by Jo Robinson, a must-have for anyone who eats fruits and veggies. Recommended to me by a TOP reader, and thanks again for that. It's in the form of an encyclopedia, with entries for every major edible fruit and vegetable, telling you about their history, the various cultivars, how to shop for them and how to cook them for maximal health benefit. Big surprise—there's no rule that covers everything, like "always eat raw" or "always eat fresh" or "always eat organic" or any of the other popular ideologies. Everything's different and you have to take each one individually and case by case.

P.S. Someday soon I will do a post about the organic heirloom apple orchard near me. Tomorrow I plan to get some fresh-squeezed 100% pure Concord grape juice from the vineyard across the main road. Life is good in the Finger Lakes.

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Gordon Lewis: "Please do write a post about the organic heirloom apple orchard. I remember when you and I visited that orchard for the first time and hearing all about the owner's background (not what one might expect) while trying to decide among all of the exotic varieties he had. I can't remember which one we decided on, but I know for sure it was amazingly crisp, delicious, and bargain priced."

Sunday Support Group: Selling Nikons

Sometimes I think I missed my calling. I've got a dirty little secret: I sometimes believe I know the right ways to sell stuff.

I think I might be a closet marketer.

I had a first-cousin-once-removed and a great uncle who were in advertising. Remember "The Heartbeat of America, It's Today's Chevrolet"? That was my cousin's. Me, I'm not in marketing or advertising, of course. In fact, as I explained the other day, the opposite: I'm on the side of the consumer—the customer—not the manufacturer or seller. And, of course, thinking you might be good at something is a far cry from actually being able to do it, or from putting yourself in a position to try it, much less succeed at it. It's usually a lot more complicated in real life.

Good ideas are good ideas no matter where they come from, though.

My ideas for a few products have led to those products being brought to market over the years, the result of suggestions to, and conversations with, manufacturers. I say ideas because just suggesting ideas isn't the same as being responsible for the decisions to go forward and spend actual money. Of course, with some of the ideas I suggested, the manufacturers were concerned with not giving me any credit. Like I'd dog them for money or something. In one or two cases it was really egregious—I had long, detailed, documented back-and-forth communications with companies, the companies would do exactly what I was pitching, and then they'd disavow ever knowing me or hearing of me. For the record, I've never asked for money. But in a couple of cases, when what I pitched obviously worked, a thank-you would have been nice.

I see this kind of thing so clearly sometimes. So many times I'll see ad or marketing campaigns and roll my eyes—they're so often wrong, or dumb, or—this is the worst—they'll represent a botched opportunity. "No, no, not that, if only you had done this...." Sometimes, just for fun, I find myself inventing marketing campaigns in my head. I don't know if other people do that. I've been doing it for years. It amuses me, I guess.

Anyway, I came up with a perfect marketing plan for the Nikon Z6 and Z7 in my head yesterday, just wandering around the house vacuuming and doing dishes. I could sell  those cameras like gangbusters. Six 15-second ads, cheap to produce, quick to make, easily realizable in either print or video format. And they'd not only do good for the full-frame mirrorless cameras, they'd do good for Nikon as a brand. They'd work equally well for deep mavens and casual consumers. I'll bet could write all six in one day. (Or, if I actually had to do it, one week.)

...But sorry, I ain't sharing. I've had enough of big fat companies stealing my ideas then pretending I don't exist. I stopped doing that...well, the last time it happened.

I think this one's the very best imaginary marketing campaign I've ever come up with, though. Of course, amateur imaginings are a far cry from professional reality, and I know that. But I still think my idea would sell Nikons like nobody's business. I know how they should do it. Good ideas are good ideas no matter where they come from.

...Of course, I also still think my idea for the last episode of M*A*S*H was greatly superior to the one the writers actually came up with. Heh. Like I said, daydreaming is not the same as doing. Don't think I've got a big head.

It's not big, it's just in the clouds.

Okay now. Back to the work-week and to real life,

Mike

P.S. The point for the Sunday Support Group: for your longterm project, stick with what you know. Don't spin your wheels.

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Sunday Support Group: Letter from my Head

-

All the chickens come on home to roost
Plump bodies blotting out the sky
You know it breaks my heart in half, in half
When I see them trying to see them fly
'Cuz you just can't do
Things your body wasn't meant to.

—The Mountain Goats, "Dilaudid"

If you read it, you remember that last Sunday's post about long-term projects, "When to Not Persist," was kind of a downer. I had to 'fess up to having drifted away from my book project ambitions (in my fellowship we call it "going back out," i.e., falling off the wagon. Returning to our former state—in this case, my natural state of sloth, inertia and ennui). I had been feeling guilty about this, and it was liberating to man up and come out with it.

So now, good news. I've switched gears and changed projects. I've decided to take John's advice and slam out a book about photography. Starting with a brief autobiography of my life in photography, then switching to an insider history of The Online Photographer. Then I'll recount some of my adventures and misadventures in the various industries and people I've intersected with. Next, a section about the aesthetics of art and practice. Finally, I'll write down my reflections about the changing state of the art over the time I've been involved with the medium. (I just made that all up on the spot. Sounds okay, though.) Along the way I'll sing like a canary and tell tales. I like telling stories, and I got a whole bunch of 'em, and if I leave them sit there on the hard drive, one day the hard drive will just fail and then where will all the stories be? Lost and gone forevs.

No timetable, and of course I'm notorious for not finishing anything, so there's no guarantee this will ever become something.

If it does become a book PDF, however, every loyal booster who contributes via Patreon will get it for free, so you don't have to worry about missing anything. Anything I manage to finish, you'll get, no charge. That's not to say I'll finish anything, but it means those folks won't miss it.

The best-laid schemes o' Mikes an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

—Robbie Burns, "To a Mouse," tr. mod. auct.

I would think this one's going to be a piece of cake, though, because I'm not going to worry about it too much. I'm just going to start writing. It's all in my head already, so I can just write off the top. Like writing a letter. And that goes fast.

Mike

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Sunday Support Group: When to Not Persist?

-

We'd sell out, if only we knew how.

—Jerry Garcia

As you may know, I've been trying to write a thriller, which is specific kind of genre novel with its own forms and rules. Thrillers are much more popular, and sell better, than so-called "literary" novels (or, as they used to be called back when they were novel, "novels"). I've got to be honest: things aren't going well.

I heard a story about Michael Crichton, the late book author who wrote a string of bestsellers including The Andromeda Strain, The Great Train Robbery and Jurassic Park. Supposedly he read a bestseller when he was a young doctor and thought, "that's not so hard. I could do that." So he bought a stack of bestsellers and read them all, absorbing the styles and plots and forms and tropes and modes. Then he started writing his own.

I'm apparently not able to do that. I've tried to study thrillers, and I've read a bunch of them, and I have a good mentor whose advice I've tried to take to heart, but when I try to write my own I'm like a Boy Scout far from home trying to start a campfire in the woods in the rain: it just won't catch*.

I always had this idle thought hanging around in the back of my head that I'd be good at novels. I like telling stories, of the James Herriot variety—part joke and part anecdote, cut to fit, like you'd share at a bar over a pint of ale. (I always suspected Herriot's tales started out as pub stories.) I don't mind "storifying" the truth. And I like yarns. A great example of the yarn form is the movie Little Big Man by director Arthur Penn, little brother of photographer Irving Penn, from the novel by Thomas Berger. To "get" that movie, as Roger Ebert did but many other critics didn't, you have to keep in mind the structure as you watch it: it's an old man spinning a yarn.

But here's the rub: I kinda can't stand false data. I really only like stories if they make some truth more clear or vivid. But with novels, you're supposed to make stuff up. It's not supposed to have to be true. 

My mentor is pretty clear on the idea that you have to be deeply familiar with thriller novels to write them. Not only do I not read thrillers, I hardly read novels. Just to keep in touch with fiction I try to read one classic novel every year. One. Last year I finished Heart of Darkness on December 31st...in the evening.

I read nonfiction.

You can't say you're a reader of anything if you read only one (or two, or three) a year. It's not that I'm bigoted in favor of literary novels and a snob concerning genre novel forms; it's that I'm not a novelist. Not knowing thrillers is not the problem. It's that's I don't know novels. I probably read 40 books of nonfiction for every novel I read. At least 20. That's the problem.

You've got to know when to press on, but you've also got to know when to quit. "Persistence" and "perseverance" are beloved myths. But the truth is that persistence is just as often counterproductive as it is positive. You can't make yourself be what you aren't, no matter how hard you try. You've got to figure out what it is you're meant to do. I'm pretty discouraged right now, but I'm not going to give up on that. There's got to be some kind of long-form writing I'd be good at, and somehow I need to figure out what it is.

On that score, I will try to persist.  :-)

Mike

*Cf. Jack London's "To Build a Fire"—but note that there are two versions with divergent plots and different lessons learned by the protagonist! I like the little-known 1902 version better.

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Joe: "I just finished Robert Gottlieb's Avid Reader, a memoir in which he talks about his time as Editor-in-Chief at Simon and Schuster (among many, many other interesting positions including Editor-in-Chief at The New Yorker).

"He has a lot to say about Michael Crichton. Apparently Crichton needed a lot of editing:

'...Michael had a strong background in science. And he had a keen eye, or nose, for cutting-edge areas of science—and, later, sociology—that could be used as material for thrillers while cleverly popularizing the hard stuff for the general public. You got a lesson while you were being scared.

'What Michael wasn’t was a very good writer. The Andromeda Strain was a terrific concept, but it was a mess—sloppily plotted, underwritten, and worst of all, with no characterization whatsoever. His scientists were beyond generic—they lacked all human specificity; the only thing that distinguished some of them from the others was that some died and some didn’t.'"

 Joseph Reid: "As a person who makes a living putting words on paper, I can can tell you that writing is easy. Hard is picking a fabric for a sofa. That is an irretrievable act. What you write you can change endlessly before publication, before you have to face the fear that someone else will see your words and retch. So write, dammit! STFU and punch those keys! Also, when did this undertaking change from personal story to thriller? Writing the former would fix that fact-block you have."

David A Edelstein: "My favorite bit of trivia about the 1908 version of 'To Build a Fire' is that apparently Mr. London wrote (revised?) it sitting on the lanai of his friend Princess Kaiulani's house, on O'ahu."

Bill Mitchell: "Thirty years ago a photographer friend and myself decided to write a best seller. It was going to be a 'dirty book' with each chapter fully devoted to a one single perversion. Couldn't lose! It had to have some sort of plot, so we decided to make a murder mystery out of it. Unfortunately, as we progressed, we found the story more interesting than the perversions. I have spent the last 30 years rewriting, revising, and updating the manuscript. Finally, 30 years later, Born to Die will be published this year by a reputable publisher. Occasionally, I run across one of those obscene chapters that we discarded. Even today, I find them incredibly erotic as hell! (Including the ones that I wrote 30 years ago!) Good luck with yours Mike!"

Charlie Ewers: "Points well taken, Mike, but you should still finish your novel. I'm a nonfiction writer, pure and simple, and nonfiction makes up 100% of my published work, but I wanted to write a novel, more or less to see if I could do it. I could, and I used that novel for the thesis in my Master's program. Tried unsuccessfully to get it published (I still think it was pretty good) but then realized its true purpose. I had to write that novel to move past it and back into my nonfiction. Yes, I did learn some stuff regarding narrative form, dialogue writing, and so forth, but the real benefit came from successfully finishing a long (in terms of number of words written) project. That experience served me very well when it came time to write my dissertation, and I would guess it would serve you well, too, if you turn later to writing a long piece of nonfiction."

Tex Andrews: "Oh, boy! Have I got a lot to say about this! Here's a story from grad school, severely cropped: For those who haven't been through it, studio art programs rely an 'the crit'—end of semester, faculty troop into your studio, rip you up, you defend. Lots more to that, but no room here. let's just say the better you are at defending/deflecting, the more success you'll have in the crit. Note I didn't say the better your work was....

"So, in my second semester, I was bound and determined to have a super-strong crit. Tons of work, because I thought other students did far too little, so much it was all over my studio, floor to ceiling. A sculpture I was working on I couldn't finish, so I laid the parts on the floor, and wrote notations in chalk with arrows, like a 3D mechanical drawing. Not enough room for people to come in my studio, fully.

"I was also working full time, two-hour commute one way, and, in the opposite direction of the University of Maryland, one-hour commute one way. By the day of the crit I was exhausted, running on fumes. My normal defenses and intellectual readiness at an all-time low. Could barely, numbly answer questions, coming at me fast and furious. Everyone looking at me really strangely, some peering into the room. They looked oddly alarmed.

"Crit ends, and everyone starts to leave. One prefessor, Jim Sanborn, a sculptor with a rising star in those days, last one to leave, stopped and looked back at me, cocked his head, and said: 'You know, Tex, you should really stop and look at your work sometime.'

"Huh?

"Then I kind of spun around and saw what they saw. I had entered as a painter, started getting other ideas, started furiously developing them, and then basically exploded my brain onto the walls of my studio—and created my first installation. So, then I was an installation artist (plus other things).

"So, Mike, I think you should take a look at your work, all of it. ;-} You know, novels take lots of forms...."

Sunday Support Group: More Than Funny

But it is funny too—Michael Jr.'s TED Talk. I enjoyed this and I liked his message, and my son did too.

And it's on topic. Hope your punchlines—er, projects—are going well!

Mike

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cecilia: "What a nice way to start the morning! Thanks!"

Sunday Support Group: Family Matters

Alyssa and Xander horsing around at Watkins Glen

I love the phrase "family matters," with its serendipitous ambiguity—it means both "family concerns" and "family is important."

My son and his new girlfriend have been visiting since Wednesday, so I've been on vacation. We went to Watkins Glen, the Curtiss Museum, the Finger Lakes Boating Museum, and the Corning Museum of Glass, and their visit gave me permission to go off my diet for five days—we've had several SAD* meals and went out to dinner four times. They're into board games, so we played several nights. One of the ones we played was an incredibly complex game called Scythe. Fun.

I used to take a sort of "not my thing" attitude to complicated board games, but now I think it's good mental exercise for me to learn them, so I was a more willing participant this visit. Of course I couldn't have managed without Xander as a guide. Scythe was funded on Kickstarter in 2016 with the help of 17,739 backers, who pledged $1,810,294 to help bring the project to life. Xander is deep into board games and very adept at them. He still wants to try his hand at game design, despite working 50+ hours a week.

And it was great to meet Alyssa, who is a centered young woman of integrity with a sharp wit but even temperament, a nice combination.

As for my own LTP**, my writing discipline went AWOL for a few days because—well, you know, family matters. But I'm okay with that. I haven't seen Xander since last October and, as a Dad, albeit semi-retired from active duty, pretty much nothing makes me happier.

Xander at CMoG

If you're a parent I'm pretty sure you can relate!

Mike

*Standard American Diet

**Long-term project

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Mark Cotter: "There are moments when one just requires a Like button."

kirk tuck: "I agree with what everyone else said. I love this blog!!! And I'm having fun with my kid too. He's perfect. Thanks for all the perspective Mike!"

Jay: "Lovely post! One of those instances where I wish Typepad had a Like button!"

Sunday Support Group: That's Progress

Good news to report this Sunday. I've passed 20,000 words on my novel, which means the first draft is one-fourth finished. So I'm behind schedule but making progress.

I'm shooting for a first draft of 80k words because, knowing myself, I'll inevitably add another 20–40k words in the rewriting process. That'll give me my target word count of 100–120k words.

A few "project" news blips from friends and readers:

Hugh Crawford by Jamie Livingston

• Hugh Crawford sold a number of copies of his massive and epic Jamie Livingston book to TOP readers a few weeks ago. He's very grateful to all purchasers! Here's a link again to the book project page.

• You probably remember John Lehet from his last print sale here. Here's John (above) visiting a few of his own photographs that are hanging in the waiting room of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders' office in the Senate Building in Washington, D.C.

• Tim Smith followed one of my recommendations and bought himself a swell pair of Ohm Walsh Super Sound Cylinder speakers (you can find them on the Beta page of the Ohm Speakers website). He says, "I’m in a sublime state of bless-ed nirvana-tude with my Ohm speakers. And I owe it all to you! They really are wonderful. I find myself listening endlessly and have a hard time walking out of the room, wanting to hear just one more."

John Marshall, Bob Burnett, and Susan Marshall at Nova Fest

• Bob Burnett, who debuted his short film Marshall's House here on TOP, is seen here at a screening of the film at Nova Fest in April, flanked by John and Susan Marshall, the owners of Marshall’s House. If you haven't watched the film yet, it's well worth the seven minutes it takes. Here ya go!

•

Hope you do well with your own long-term project in the coming week. Stick with it!

Mike

UPDATE from Hugh Crawford: "The you-can't-make-it-up coincidences of that photo continue. This weekend I was at the wedding of one of my nieces, the younger sister of the little girl in my lap in the photograph. She, the flower girl at my wedding in the photo, was the maid of honor for her sister. (Oh, and the TOP banana discount for the book is still in effect.)"

Mike explains: When I first published that photograph, in our first mention on TOP of the Jamie Livingston project, in this post in 2008, I chose it from thousands of alternatives—and had no idea the picture was of Hugh, who I still have never met in person.

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MikeR: "Okay, this is admittedly silly but, in the photo of John Lehet, I noticed how he wears the shoulder strap of his bag. Duh...for years, I've been doing it backwards, and wondered why my Calumet bag was designed that awkward way. So, despite not having an active project, I've learned something new from the Sunday support group. Now I just have to ignore those Ohm Walsh speakers."

Mike replies: Easy enough to do as long as you don't listen to them.

Michael Ferron: "When I retired from full time back in January part of my financial survival plan was to fix up and rent out a studio apartment on the property. That went as planned but I lost my darkroom in doing so. When remodeling I created a walk-in closet size space from the existing apartment with a separate entrance, and for the last few days I have been re-constructing the new darkroom.

"My long term plan is to shoot mostly 35mm B&W film with my Nikon F2 standard and hopefully land a printable decent keeper once a week and then edit it down to the best 12 of the year. No electronics involved. Why? Umm because I can. (Hey it's just a passion and hobby.  :-)  Now if I can land that above mentioned one keeper a month and continue for, say, three years, hopefully I will have created a respectable 36-photograph portfolio of urban, street and street portraits centered around downtown Austin, Texas. I'll need to do repeated butt kicking on myself to see this through, but as of now I am enthusiastic."

Sunday Support Group: Great Crash

My self-belief crashed this past week (did it seem kind of arid around here? I was depressed). I read the descriptions of several leading thrillers, re-read mine so far, and got morose. I thought, what's the use? How can I compete?

But here's the interesting part: I recovered again. I thought, well, I'm a bit weak-willed, and I don't have a well-armored belief that I can do what I want to do. But I've committed to doing it. So I hauled out the calculator again, figured out the number of words I've written every day on average so far and the number of words I need to write each day to achieve my goal of a first draft within this calendar year (~350), and plunged back in. Because, y'know, I've committed to doing it; so I'm going to do it. And the very next day, the day after my self-belief fell off that cliff, I was back at it, and had a pretty good day.

I'm pretty proud of that. This lack of self-belief often kills my projects. My pattern is that I get excited about the idea, plunge into the work enthusiastically, then suffer creeping doubts as the initial enthusiasm ebbs and my insecurities creep in, and then, rather than face those feelings and deal with them, I throw in the towel and give up. I had a nice conversation with Kirk Tuck, too, about his book. So I figured maybe the best thing to do is to break my pattern, and simply slog onward. I'm not that bad a writer. I'm having fun, generally. Yeah, okay, so it's likely I'm not writing the next Da Vinci Code or Harry Potter and the Slythering Dementers Play Quiddich or [name successful bestselling novel]. But I said that in 2018 I'm going to finish the draft of a book. And it's just not that hard to write 350 words a day; I've been doing that and then some for years.

So then, onward.

It was a good lesson: in any long-term project, feeling discouraged is inevitable. Deal with it. Plan your work and follow your plan.

Mike

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Kenneth Wajda: "Everybody writes a lousy first draft; that's what first drafts are. The problem is we look at other authors' finished work and we compare our first draft to it and get discouraged, yet they all wrote lousy first drafts, too. The difference is they kept re-writing while we quit. So don't quit, good writing is rewriting, and right now you're just getting ideas out on the page, it's clay that you will shape later. The one thing you have that they don't have is your original voice and they cannot give us what you can so we need your voice, not a variation of their work. Keep going. You're doing it."

Mike replies: That was very encouraging, thanks.

Dennis Mook: "Your feelings about writing mirror how I sometimes feel about my photography. 'What's the point?' often times I ask myself, 'It has all been done before.' Yet I grab my camera and go out as often as I can. I won’t accept failure as an end state. I feel failing is necessary as an intermediate step to learn, grow, regroup, assess, acquire more determination and continue to strive for success. But I also think failure is relative and not absolute. Major League Baseball players are an example of those who fail more than 60–70% of the time but that is considered a success.

"One more thought. If you have done absolutely everything you can, left no stone unturned, tried every avenue available to succeed, did everything possible you could do and you don’t achieve your goal, in my opinion that is not a failure."

Bob Cook: "I'm not sure I can bring myself to check in with you any more. Sheesh, I have problems of my own."

Mike replies: Really? See, I thought today's was a very positive column. You can't help feeling discouraged sometimes. The message is that you can swerve around it and leave it in the rear-view mirror. It's a good thought, or so I thought.

Kirk Tuck: "Mike, you inspired me. I'm working on my second 'Henry White' book today. I'm aiming to be done with it in time for the holidays. Keep writing the Sunday support column; I think it's helpful for all of us!"

Sunday Support Group (A Day Late)

I've been posting notices about my book-writing project on Sundays, as a way of encouraging others to keep up with their own large 2018 projects. A day late today.

March was, to put it kindly, a setback for me. The Joni Cole Rule is "touch it every day," meaning, whatever you're working on, at least open it / sit down to it / pick up the instrument or the camera—whatever "touching it" means for your project, do it every day. Not to apply any porcine lip-gloss, I failed at that in March. We had a big snowstorm with a loss of power, I went into the hospital with a heart-attack scare and came out with the rather bizarre (under the circumstances) condition placed on me to not type for a week or two, and I lost willpower and momentum.

Then I found the last piece to the puzzle, which was to work on it first thing in the morning, when I have the most energy. My mentor said, "I think your idea of hitting the writing hard when you’re the sharpest is a good idea, but the best thing about it is that you’re on a schedule. Scheduled writing is critical; otherwise, it’s too easy to let go. It’s like exercise. You gotta do it, but if you don’t have a schedule, you’ll start skipping."

March was a month of skipping; April has been a month of regular work. It's been going great.

Overall, I'm really glad I didn't let the setbacks of March swamp the project. Could have happened. I'm now a little behind my original schedule, still, but catching up fast, and I'm getting work done regularly—six days a week. (Monday, when I play pool with the older guys, is my day off now—from writing, and, usually, or this is the plan, from TOP.)

Moral of the story: don't let setbacks sink the project. Keep working at the method, meaning the mechanics and the nuts-and-bolts of how you work, until you hit on the way of working that allows you to get the job done. Until you're working easily and regularly, without needing too much in the way of self-discipline or willpower, you're not there yet; keep trying. I'm thankful I did.

Lastly, although this isn't pertinent, I have to say I just love working on the book. It's so nice to be able to write without the pressure of immediate publication. I only work for 75 minutes, first thing in the morning after getting up, taking care of the dogs, and fixing coffee, but I look forward to it each and every day. I honestly want to do this for the rest of my life, or at least as long as I've got my marbles. I'm blessed that TOP allows me to work those extra 75 minutes every day.

Hope your own project is going well too!

Mike
(Thanks to J.C.)

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David Maxwell: "Maybe a day late for you, but right on time for me. On Saturday I started a new book project. Time will tell if it is the one to break the 5,000 word barrier (I write very quickly and efficiently to that point, before rapidly losing momentum) or if it will join dozens of other abandoned projects. Previous manuscripts fell into one of two categories—books that I wanted to write or books that I thought other people would want to buy. The latter always fizzled out due to lack of passion while the former would usually die because what little pragmatism I possess would rise up and tell me that I'm wasting my time. Fortunately my newest project combines the two for the first time. I'm referring to it as a 'memoir/how-not-to guide.' It has been a fun few days of brainstorming, outlining, and writing. I have high hopes for this one. Thanks for the inspiration Mike!"

Process

This is about my writing project, but I think it applies, globally, to just about any creative project you're serious about.

It also announces a slight procedural change to TOP.

I think I've finally discovered the last component of my process for writing this book...I had already decided to try to "touch it every day," courtesy of writing teacher Joni B. Cole (a resolution interrupted somewhat by my hand/arm injury, which is now 95% resolved), but I still wasn't working comfortably.

Now I think I've finally put the final piece in place. For years I've been in the habit of getting up, taking care of the dogs, fixing my coffee, and sitting down at the computer right away. Then I work through the morning and into the early afternoon. Later in the afternoons my focus deteriorates and I spend a lot of time doing chores or errands, answering email, web surfing, and mucking about with this and that. So I originally figured it wouldn't be that difficult to carve an extra hour or two out of the afternoons to work on the book.

The problem was that my writing energy is strongest when I sit down in the morning.

So I've made just a little tweak to my routine—I get up on schedule, do my morning routines, then sit down at the upstairs computer and set my iPhone timer for an hour and fifteen minutes. I've been easily writing about 6–700 words in that time. I'm focused, it's quiet, and I've got plenty of energy.

It's going very well and it seems to be the last piece in the puzzle. Plus, it relieves the pressure on the rest of the day—I get the book-writing task out of the way early and then I don't have it hanging over my head, threatening to not get done as my energy ebbs throughout the day. I'm also trying to follow Ernest Hemingway's trick of not stopping until you know what you're going to write next, which means you know where to begin when you sit down tomorrow.

I think with any artistic project you have to be hardheaded and practical about both your method and your process. Until it's a habit, you have to be determined. Everyone's different, and everyone will have different "tweaks" they need to make to their process to solve whatever difficulties they're experiencing. But this stuff is important, and we need to take this kind of problem-solving seriously.

Anyway, expect new posts on TOP to begin appearing in the afternoons from now on.

And if you're good at setting goals and working toward them effectively in an organized, conscious way, consider that to be a skill and a gift. Not everyone can do it. And it's not enough to just make plans for our work—we also have to be willing to modify those plans as needed when we recognize that we're encountering difficulties or impediments.

Mike

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Ed Hawco: "No surprise here. This works like any priority that we don't take seriously as a priority, such as saving money for retirement. People will complain that at the end of their payroll cycle they just don't have any money left to set aside. It's exactly like your former routine of waiting until the end of your workday to write. By then there's nothing left. But if you do the priority thing first (whether it's writing time or slipping $100 into a retirement plan), then it gets done every time. At the end of the day or the pay cycle, you barely notice the reduced energy/pay because by then you're just phutzing around anyway, whether you had done the high priority thing or not. I wish I could claim credit for this brilliant piece of conventional wisdom, but it's been around for a while. It's one of those things that is, on one hand, so freaking obvious, yet on the other hand so hard to actually initiate."

Eamon Hickey: "Yep, two good lessons. It's been a big key for me in my own book project—to work on it first, in the morning, for an hour or an hour-and-a-half. Then I do the assignment work that pays the bills. And I also make a note for myself, at the end of each session, of what I'm writing (or editing) next. I've started doing this with all my projects, of almost any kind. Helps me a ton. By the way, on the energy waning in the afternoon thing. I largely cured that by mixing mostly decaf beans into my coffee (I drink the equivalent of about 1 or 1.5 caffeinated cups of coffee a day, but spread over multiple cups through the morning and afternoon). What I had discovered was that a strong dose of caffeine in the morning was leading to the classic coming-down-from-a-stimulant crash in the afternoon, just like what happens on the backside of a cocaine binge (so I hear)."

Sunday Support Group: Sails Catch the Wind

Great news about my book project. I kept slogging, kept slogging, and it stayed in the mud, stayed in the mud. But now it seems that finally, finally, my sails have caught the wind. Scenes are tumbling to mind. The bow carves the waves: plot takes care of itself. Just gotta grab on, grab on, grab on! Hold the tiller hard against the heeling wind.

Otherwise, life right now seems full of...

...Waiting. Manuel wrote, "You know, Mike, all these articles about the iPhone are getting a little tiresome." Well, that's because I'm still waiting for the Sony A7III. Waiting. Day after day. Wait, wait.

Spring is elusive. Four mornings in a row now I've awakened to find the ground white with snow. Just a layering, and it evaporates as fast as frost, but Spring stays away. Wait for it.

Dreading Tax Day. Taxes are going to slaughter me this year. Stun me like a body blow from Joe Frazier. I depend on the holiday months to help with taxes and TOP had a terrible holiday season this year. Waiting for April 17th feels like sitting under the Sword of Damocles.

...Although that's not quite right as a metaphor. The tale supposedly comes down to us from Timaeus of Tauromenium through the Roman orator Cicero:

According to the story, Damocles was pandering to Dionysius, his king, and exclaimed to him that Dionysius was truly fortunate as a great man of power and authority, surrounded by magnificence. In response, Dionysius offered to switch places with Damocles for one day so that Damocles could taste that very fortune firsthand. Damocles quickly and eagerly accepted the king's proposal. Damocles sat down in the king's throne surrounded by every luxury, but Dionysius arranged that a huge sword should hang above the throne, held at the pommel only by a single hair of a horse's tail. Damocles finally begged the king that he be allowed to depart because he no longer wanted to be so fortunate, realizing that with great fortune and power comes also great danger. (Wikipedia)

But my sorry state has nothing to do with power. Maybe a better metaphor would be the condemned man waiting for the blow of the axe? Nope, hyperbolic. The tax bill isn't going to literally kill me. Am I just whimpering? Very well then, then I am*. April is the cruellest month....

I'm sure a lot of you out there are in the exact same boat. Some of the richest people out there and some of the poorest people out there. Nobody likes tax day. Most people don't. Some of you kept all your receipts and paid your quarterlies and had your taxes filed by the end of January, all signed and neat, but a lot of you are just like me, quivering heaps of terrified jelly quaking and weeping and waiting for the end to come, knowing you're going to be all bruised and desolate at the beginning of May and eating macaroni and cheese and so forth. Taxes knock us down flat.

Anyway, everything feels like waiting. Waiting. Something is imminent. Everything is. Wait for it. Wait. Hurry up please, it's time....

When the A7III comes, then Manuel can get tired reading about that. And we'll probably blink and a blistering Summer heat will set in, and we'll long for these refreshing Spring snows. Right now, though, everything's in a state of suspension.

...And you know, come to think, despite his great popularity with the people, who repeatedly protected him, Cicero was beheaded. His severed head was nailed to the Rostra in the Roman Forum, where Antony's vindictive wife Fulvia pulled out the tongue and pierced it repeatedly with her hairpin in revenge against Cicero's power with words.

(Maybe I should just say, "There is nothing proper about what you are doing, taxman, but do try to kill me properly." Paraphrasing from Cicero's last words to the soldier who slew him. Woe!)

Heh. I'm in a silly mood this morning. My thoughts are zinging around like a bullet in a metal room. So how's your project coming? I need to go "touch" my book. Today my protagonist is going to the city morgue, to see whether a bruised and broken body is the woman he loves...the wind blows....

Mike

*"Can't complain, but sometimes I still do." Heh.

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William Schneider: "For your initial Sunday Support Group post, I described how I was digitizing of all of my father's Kodachrome slides. That work concluded two weeks ago, and I purchased and mailed flash drives, with all the files on them, to family. I got a few heart-felt 'thank you' emails in return, making the effort worthwhile. I am a bit adrift thinking about what my next project will be though."

Trevor Johnson: "I have a few projects at present. Firstly, two systematic reviews in healthcare, one of which I am leading, now well over 100 pages. Secondly, I have been asked to record the keyboard works of Handel. The last time I played the six 'great' fugues live was in London, on a Yamaha CFX. IMHO a better piano than a Steinway Model D, which I grew up with. A book of photos in Paris, from film Leica, film OM to digital Ricoh GR. And a book set in the South of France, where Shirley, my wife, and I, spend our summer holidays. A story within a story, like Possession by A S Byatt or Das Glassperlenspiel by Hermann Hesse."

Sunday Support Group: Panasonic Photographer

Hey, today's my birthday!

According to custom I should be four years from retirement, but, as I like to joke, "My retirement plan is to keep working." (That might not be so funny one day, but you know what they say: oh well.)

So how did your project go this past week?

I had a rocky week. I found myself procrastinating too often. But I didn't get discouraged. I kept after it. I'm finding that if I don't make progress on my 275 x 2 words every day, I make that much progress on average. I'll have an unproductive day or two, then bash out 2k words.

The resolution is still to "touch it every day."

Psychological resistance is a bear. If you resolve to spend just a few minutes on your project every say (set a goal of ridiculously few minutes—three, or five, or seven), it gets you over the obstacle of that initial resistance to getting started. How hard is it to do something for three minutes? So just do it.

TOP reader Ken White wanted me to see his presentation of a short documentary project he created. It's a video-based still-photo essay of Paul Cauthen and his band, and Ken's comments about a performance in Luckenbach, Texas. It's called "Sometimes Magic Happens" and I thought it was great. Only takes two minutes to watch.

My upstairs "workstation," where I work on my books.
It's a luxury to work on projects that are a stretch for me.

As long as I sit down at the upstairs computer every day and open a book file and putter for a few minutes, I forgive myself if I have an unproductive day. My resolution is to keep after it and not get discouraged.

I made a wise move in setting up a second workstation upstairs. I spent the money and took the time to set it up properly and I like it up there...it's a pleasant place to work. (I still don't have offsite backup, despite all the good suggestions, for which thanks. I'll work on that.)

Update from 'Weigh In'
By the way, I made a decision about the camera indecision—I decided to become a Panasonic photographer again for a while. Without deciding which Panasonic. I'm going to get either a G9 or GX9 or GX8, or maybe two of the three, or maybe all three. Maybe I'll put the 12–35mm zoom on a G9 and the 20mm ƒ/1.7 on a GX9. Of course, I can't afford to do all that at once...but then, you've got to have goals.

Forget your shortcomings—they don't matter
I enjoyed being sixty last year. The way I look at it, I was "extremely young for an old guy." Still true! Good thing I'm so young; I have goals this year.

Hope you made progress on your own goals last week. Take a few minutes to review. If you didn't make progress, forgive yourself and forget about it. A new week starts now. So get going!

Mike

P.S. Top illustration: Fuji X-T2 with 14mm ƒ/2.8.

iPhone 7+ version of the same shot, processed similarly:

Original contents copyright 2018 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.

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Trevor Johnson: "Retirement? Artists never retire."

Mike replies: That's a compliment!

JohnMFlores adds: "The only writer that I know of that retired is Philip Roth. He was prolific though, so it's understandable.

And I'm writing more and more precisely because I don't plan on retiring in the traditional middle-class sense; I don't like sans-a-belt slacks and find golf boring. Keep at that novel and Happy Birthday!"

kirk tuck: "Hi Mike, Happy Birthday!!! I have the same retirement plan. As I always tell my financial planner: 'If I take late retirement and early death I'll just about make the spread.' I'm jealous though. I'm 62 and I'm still hauling around lights, cameras, lenses, multi-carts, light stands, and more two or three times a week on day long shooting assignments. Video has added to the burden. I dream of a time when I can sit in a beautiful room in the rural wilderness and do my job with just my brain and my fingers.... At that point I'd probably stop using ellipses....

"Birthdays are great days for walking with cameras."

Rick Denney: "My 60th is this year, but procrastination knows no age. As I get older, though, I'm more likely to forget what I was procrastinating about, but that's another problem. In the music world, the most difficult thing is to simply take the instrument out of the case. A close friend teaches his students that way: Take the instrument out of the case. Sit down with it in your hands. Then decide if you are going to practice. That removes the pressure of accomplishment from the simple act of removing the instrument from the case. Of course, once I'm sitting with the tuba in my lap, I'm there for usually at least two hours. It becomes a greater burden to put it back in its case than to continue playing it. My problem with writing projects is that the thing is already out of the case, and when I sit down to it, I find more tempting modes of procrastination, this website not least among them. But, as with music, once I start, I find it difficult to stop."

RubyT: "Happy Birthday! I was going to congratulate you on being a prime, but then I have a weird preference for primes. :)"

Kent Phelan: "Happy Birthday Mike! I had a good week. Yesterday I finished Week 51 of my OC/OL/52 project. That would be: one camera, one lens, 52 weeks. I decided when I embarked on this gig to use my Fuji X-T2 with the 23mm ƒ/2 lens. I see in the 35mm FOV. Always have. I cannot remember all of the 35mm lenses I have owned. The little Fujicron was a natural for this. I have cheated a bit, however, in that during the project I bought an X100F with, as you know, the same 23mm lens. I have interchanged them since. One 'keeper' photograph per week has been daunting at times. Along about week 20 I thought 'Oh gawd man, what have you gotten yourself into!' Then came the changing seasons and winter here in the Pacific Northwest, which brings a steady stream of Zone V: rain-rain-gray-rain. Day after day; good thing the X-T2 is WR. Today begins Week 52. Feeling good."