Time with Tom

Never Leave Home Without It

I talked once before about always having a camera handy. That advice has come in very useful for me over and over again over the months, and this past weekend was no difference. I was walking to the Post Office near my apartment to pick up a package (the Ninja Turtles movie pack, to be specific – why yes, I am a nerd, what makes you ask?), and decided at the last second to take my new camera out for a full spin. Upon looking at the pictures later on, I’ve come to the conclusion that I need some more practice with it – the lens on this is a different animal than the one on the Canon Rebel I used to use.

Still, it was nice to take the camera out for a spin. All I’ve really done with it is taken some shots from my room, and truth be told that doing that with a new camera is like using a new sports car to just go to the grocery store (especially once you’ve adjusted for liberal amounts of embellishment). I may need to look into doing some more winter photography, if the weather is just willing to be on my side a bit more. Doesn’t have to be as clear as it was Saturday, but even mostly sunny days can be helpful. Hell, I’ll take an overcast day sometimes, so long as it’s not raining at me in the middle of January.

Enjoy some pictures of the playground, and let me know what you think.

Tom

We Apologize for the Delay

December and January have been unfortunately busy months. My previous attempts at frequent blogging apparently went well until November, and then began faltering all over the place. My novel is unfinished, I have been unfaithful to the spirit of this site, and I’ve been completely absent on ZSN. This is clearly a problem. It’s a problem I plan to rectify.

One of the things I’ve never liked about the new year is the way people go on and on about resolutions. Why choose the first of the year? There are obvious reasons, yes, but it’s all ceremonial. Let’s face it, a promise you make yourself on January 1 never carries the weight that a promise you make yourself a different time of the year carries. Unless you’re someone like Belynda, and remain absolutely dedicated to your cause, you will fail in it. This is not pessimism – I definitely prefer my glasses half-full – but it is the way of things. The promises I’ve made to myself that I’ve been most faithful in keeping are ones that I make mid-December, or at the beginning of November. They’re promises that appear on my lips in May or July. I make a promise to myself when I need to, and I follow through out of necessity. Need begets gravity.

In any case, I will not sit here and make resolutions about writing more, or taking more photos (which I need to do, especially since I have a new camera to do that with), or claim things about going to gyms or anything. I am simply just going to write more, and take pictures more. I plan on starting some new habits that could get me going in that direction, and so it’s going to boil down to staying on myself about them. Of course, I need to be creative. It’s an outlet for me, and a way to embrace life. There are a lot of hard things, a lot of stupid things, a lot of angry or mean people. But there are the good things like laughter over a beer, or sharing an umbrella with a friend. There could be new jobs, hopefully there are new friends. But I’m not going to stress myself out about it.

I guess what it all really comes down to is picturing oneself a year in the future. Who do you want to be? Where do you want to go? I’m not quite sure who I want to be in a year, but I have some good ideas on how to get there.

In the meantime, enjoy a few shots from a new photo set I’ve begun on Flickr that I call “Illumination.” I’ve always loved light – from the sun to street lamps to campfires – and I’m just now starting to collect images of light sources. Lamps and lights are simple tools for most people – things to push away the dark at the flip of a switch. But any writer can tell you there’s something much deeper going on with lights. Not just in the physical – there’s something psychologically important about having a way to push back the shadows. But I digress. Despite my ongoing (and growing) fascination, a true purveyor of craft knows that the craft will speak for itself. I don’t think I’m quite there yet, but I’m working on it.

So without further adieu, scenes from Illumination (the full set – which is expanding – can be seen on my Flickr):

Tom

On Writing

Consider, if you will, the following passage from Terry Pratchett’s Thief of Time:

Suppose you’d watched the slow accretion of snow over thousands of years as it was compressed and pushed over the deep rock until the glacier calved its icebergs into the sea, and you watched an iceberg drift out through the chilly waters, and you got to know its cargo of happy polar bears and seals as they looked forward to a brave new life in the other hemisphere where they say the ice floes are lined with crunchy penguins, and then wham – tragedy loomed in the shape of thousands of tons of unaccountably floating iron and an exciting soundtrack…

I like to hope I’m developing my own writing style as fun to read as that one. It’s not an easy thing for me to do, especially given how heavily influenced I am by the authors I’m reading at the time of any sort of writing. My last short story, for instance, sounded like Chuck Palahniuk at first, because I had been reading Snuff at the time.

When I started Late Fees back on November 1st (still not done, but close to the exciting finale!), I began reading Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series again, because I knew that his humor style was closest to what I wanted my story to sound like, and I would be able to think in my style more clearly if that was the influence I was receiving. Before you accuse me of cheating, though: it’s totally not. It’s really just knowing who I am and what I’m like, and adjusting my habits accordingly.

Plus, Discworld is awesome.

I wonder if this sort of thing affects all artists, or if it’s something more localized to writers? I have a sneaking suspicion, though, that one of the reasons bands start sounding like one another is because that’s exactly who they’re listening to. Same thing with art periods and whatnot. Okay, upon a barely closer inspection, it’s fairly obvious that artists influence each other like crazy.

I wonder who influenced my photography, then?

Tom

Technophile

I own a typewriter.

It’s a decent looking thing. Clean, has a soft hum when you turn it on. The keys seem to work, although if I type too quickly the arms get stuck against one another. There’s even a method for whiting out letters, which is rather ingenious (you shift the tape up to the white portion of it, and re-type. The white will cover the black).

I have to admit, there is a part of me that sort of wishes it was one of the old school mechanical ones. Those iron monsters that weighed 40 lbs and just simply attracted whiskey glasses and cigarette smoke. The kind that you could imagine Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammet writing on. Ultimately, I would like to get one, but I’m willing to wait. I have time.

The only other real news is that I totally fucking won Nano Wrimo again. Here, have a thing about that, and then a picture of my typewriter.

Tom

Dust Some Cobwebs

Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve been here. I have a great excuse, I promise. I’ve been busy.

No, really.

It’s called Nano Wrimo, and I’ve talked about it here before. And I know Brandon has mentioned it. We’ve been attempting to write a novel (each) this month. I’m up almost at 32,000 words, and Brandon is somewhere, but I don’t know his actual word count. You’d have to ask him.

The novel’s going well. Better than the previous two years, that’s for sure. When I started this back in ‘07, I fell horribly behind, and had to crank out 30,000 words in a week (somewhere around 9,000 the last day, I think). It was nuts. Last year was a lot better, but I still fell behind a few days, which is both very easy to do and very dangerous to do. This year, the most I fell behind so far was one day, and I caught up the next day. I did get ahead by entire days once or twice, which was nice. At the moment, I think I’m ahead by about 12 words, but it’s all good. The plot is insane, the characters are all nutjobs, and I’m not sure some of what I write makes any sense.

So I’m obviously enjoying myself a lot.

The only other news is that I still have the completely used roll of film from the old school camera sitting on my desk, waiting for processing. I have to ask around and find somewhere that’ll do it, because I would love to see how (badly) those pictures turn out. I promise, soon as they’re scanned, you’ll get to see them. Until then, though, you’ll just have to wait.

In the meantime, have some fall pictures from me.

Tom