Lilith Saintcrow

First, a slight philosophical question. Why is it that every time I find something I like to do, my life conspires against me ever doing it?

Just asking.

On to other things. Recently I’ve been thinking about attempts. Going out taking photos at night (after tango class last night I was exhausted and truly meant to go home, but after a couple of shots I just HAD to get the rest of the night in) has taught me not very much other than people look at you oddly when you’re out late at night (especially Officers of the Law, who eye my camera with as much suspicion as my nose ring sometimes but are perfectly willing to let me go my merry way when I smile and explain I’m a writer too) and…sometimes the first attempt is the best.

Sometimes it isn’t. You can never tell.

I tend to take four or five shots of something that catches my eye, framing and editing as I go. I can tell when I’ve caught something usable, mostly. But a funny thing happens between taking the shot and opening it on my monitor to look at it. (Yes, I use digital. Getting me and chemicals together in a darkroom is a recipe for Titanic-sized disaster.)

Focus weaves in and out. The lighting turns wonky. Effects I had planned for show up alongside effects that I have no frockin’ clue about. Out of, let’s say, five shots, one might be usable and satisfying–about thirty percent of the time.

You’re beginning to understand why I deal in volume. Writing is sort of like that.

Sometimes the first run I take at a story falls flat. Sometimes I have to go back months later and tweak it. Very rarely does the bat connect sweetly with the ball, sending a crack through the park, and I know I’ve hit a home run. Funny thing, though–the more I produce, the more I get to hear that crack. It doesn’t happen often but it happens a consistent percentage of the time. So really, getting a good picture or hitting a home run in a story is all about the attempts–the percentage of times you’re going to hit one out of the park doesn’t increase very much. But the home runs you get if you’re actively swinging every day will surprise you.

Call out the men in the white coats. I just made a sports metaphor.

Your mileage will vary, of course. But, as Christopher Hyatt once remarked, playing the piano every day for ten years won’t make you Van Cliburn. It will make you a pretty damn good piano player, perhaps the best one in a ten-mile radius. That’s worth something.

Someone at a writer’s mixer once commented that she had to write “when the mood takes me, I sometimes wait for weeks.” I almost choked on my glass of red wine and quickly excused myself. If you have to wait for a mood you’re probably not going to get published. The key is to produce enough work to up the statistical chances that someone, somewhere, will like something you’ve done enough to buy it. Incidentally, this will also start you bumbling on the road to learning what works and what doesn’t, on the page–which I call “craft.” You’ll clean out the sludge in the moonshine taps so you can start distilling some awesome rotgut.

I’ll have the shots from last night up soon on Flickr. Then you can see for yourself–some of the series actually turned out well. Just remember that for every good photo there’s about twenty that were not so good or outright horrible. And remember that for every story that comes out sweet, clean, and aching to be read, there are at lease five ugly malformed ones–and even if they are ugly, they still serve a purpose. They’re still exercise, and they might be usable later. (But that’s another blog post.)

Just keep swinging that bat. It is all about how many times you try.

Related posts:

1. The Gray Land
2. Writing With A Heartbreak
3. They Are Small, But They Are Mine

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 9th, 2006 at 11:38 am and is filed under Deep Thoughts, Writing (About). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.