Keeping a Writer’s Journal

I have several small notepads floating around on my desk that I use for whatever I need to write: grocery lists, to-do lists, or ideas for writing articles. Unfortunately, they tend to get scattered and any ideas that I had become hidden under the pile of mail on my desk.

Recently, I bought “Writing Life Stories,” by Bill Roorbach, which is about writing memoir and creative nonfiction. Bill’s book is one to read and one to work through, since each chapter has several writing exercises.

I decided to get a separate notebook for the exercises so that I could keep track of them, and I’ve been thinking about keeping a writer’s journal for some time. In a way, I have unofficially been doing that, but I’m not consistent with it. It seems like I start something and then rebel when I start to think of it as something that I “have to do.”

To help focus myself on the journaling process, I did some background reading and then wrote a brief article about How to Keep a Writer’s Journal for eHow.

To prevent burnout and/or rebellion by my inner child, I allowed myself the luxury of not having to write every day. And the journal isn’t really a diary, so it’s not a listing of “what I did today” (how boring would that really be?) but rather it’s a workbook and a place to dream up ideas. I haven’t been going through the book’s exercises in exact order, either, but I’m not stressing about it. To get hung up on the particulars ruins the creative mood. In the meantime, I’m finding that even writing in the journal a few days a week is helping me to actually do some writing, while I spend less time thinking about doing some writing.

Insouciance

I woke up and the word “insouciance” floated into my mind of its own free will. The bedroom was dark and slightly too hot, and I had the vague feeling that it was the middle of the night, but otherwise my time sense deserted me.

Insouciance. I lay in bed a moment, wondering why I was even thinking about that word. I hadn’t even been writing anything earlier in the day. I thought about the word and what it means, realizing that although I could use it in a sentence I couldn’t really explain — even to myself — exactly what it meant. So I began to wonder what the official dictionary definition would be, even though I really didn’t feel like climbing out of bed to go read my dictionary.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was as though my mind was operating in overdrive. I told myself that maybe I just needed to go to the bathroom and get some water, but I didn’t want to get out of bed. Even the heat wasn’t enough to move me out from under the covers, but I couldn’t stop thinking so I finally slid out of bed, got some water, and then slipped across the hallway to my office.

I turned the light on low, but it was too dark to read and so I hit the switch to full intensity, read the definition of “insouciance,” and closed the dictionary and slipped it back into place on the bookshelf.

I let myself back into the bedroom but I misjudged how much pressure to use on the door, and it ended up closing loudly enough to wake my husband. He asked me why I had gone to the guest bathroom instead of the master bath, and I answered that I had used the master bath but then I had to go and look up a word. I said, “My mind won’t shut up.”

Several times during the night I woke up again, clear-minded and thinking about some aspect of writing, only to drift back to sleep. I can’t say I didn’t get a good night’s rest because each time I woke up I felt really good. Even when I got up at 5:30 this morning.

I’m not sure what got this writing jag started, but it’s morning now and I still seem to be energized. I did two exercises from a life writing book that I bought, and then I wrote down this little episode about insouciance, which amounted to about five pages in my new writing journal. When I got into the office early this morning, I wrote an article for eHow and published it, then I turned to Focal Plane and wrote this. And I’m still going.

They say that keeping a writing journal and writing regularly is the key to unlocking creativity and improving your writing. If my writing drive today is any indication of the success of journaling, then I might need to go to the office supply store and stock up on some more blank books. See you in the next post.

Spider Chrysanthemum

White chrysanthemum

Fall officially started last month, and I haven’t had much time to write anything for Focal Plane since the end of summer. Actually, not having the time isn’t quite true. My time has been spent in other ways, including doing quite a bit of nothing. I suppose most people feel overwhelmed occasionally. I sometimes find that when I have too much to do, it’s easier to just put it all out of my mind and do nothing. Plus, I’ve been sick with the flu for about a week and a half and just haven’t had the mental energy to think, let alone write coherently.

Well, the rainy weather has finally let up and the flu bugs have left me for another home, so I’ve finally had some time to go back through my photographs for some ideas to jump-start some new art and writing projects. Sometimes you just have to go through the motions even if you don’t feel inspired, you know? The physical work of typing sometimes is enough to get ideas moving. Not flowing, exactly: just sort of creaking along at a glacier’s pace. But that can be enough. Even a slow-moving glacier eventually carves out the whole valley! Anyway, on to the featured picture.

This spider chrysanthemum was one of the first studio photos I took. It’s lit by professional overhead lighting, but a single strong light source at least three or four feet overhead would give a very similar look. If you want to replicate the lighting, make sure you only have one light source: all windows and doors should be shut or covered, and any other lights turned off. You will still need the flash on your camera to help bring out the detail in the petals. This technique is called fill flash, because you use the flash to help fill in the details in the darker parts of the scene. If you don’t use a flash, the upper part of the flower will be lit but the lower part will be too shadowy for you to see detail, and you can’t coax them out in a photo editing program, either, because they won’t be there. The detail has to be there when you take the picture. Start with a good photo before you try to do photo editing. Remember: garbage in, garbage out.

Here, the flower is simply resting on its side on a black cloth, and the camera is placed level with the table about three feet away. I don’t remember the lens I used, but it was most likely in the 75mm range. If you have a macro lens, this is the place to use it. See how the pressure of the flower resting on the table creates an almost triangular shape to the flower? Notice how the contrast of the petals at the top (which are fanned out so nicely) with the petals at the bottom (which are pressed together) creates a dynamism to the photo. There isn’t the traditional symmetry here that you would expect from a straightforward flower shot.

When you’re photographing familiar objects, try placing them in unusual positions. Most people would expect a flower in a vase, photographed from the side. But a head-on shot of a flower gives a whole different image, and placing the flower so that light and shadow give it an unusual shape adds another dimension to the image. It’s this play of light and shadow that gives the photograph its appeal, so don’t be afraid to try unusual settings for your subjects.

Creating High-Contrast Art in Photoshop

The original full-color image of the kayaks was an RGB image.

Years ago, back when I was just learning how to develop black-and-white film and make prints, I became intrigued by high-contrast film photography. There was a Kodak film made for graphic arts applications that essentially reduced images down to a silhouette. The graphic artist in me was busy looking at form, shape, and the interplay of positive and negative space in the image. The photographer in me saw a good way to take a marginally interesting photograph and get something more vivid out of it.

I haven’t done much photo work lately due to time constraints, but I’ve been doing some dabbling and came up with an interesting way to create a high-contrast image using Photoshop’s built-in filters. I am still using an older release of Photoshop CS, but this technique should work with any of the newer versions of the software. It may also work with other photo-manipulation software, including Photoshop Elements, but you will have to look at your software’s manual or menus to see if you have any filters that are similar.

I started with the color photo of the kayaks, which was in an RGB (red-green-blue) mode, and ran the Graphic Pen filter on the image. This particular filter results in an image that looks only black-and-white, but the image is still RGB. Next, I adjusted the curves until I had the water dark and the sky white. The shape of my curve was an “S” shape laying on its side. You’ll just have to pull at the curve until you get a result that you like — this isn’t a one-size-fits-all prescription for all photos.

The high-contrast image of the kayaks owes its detail to the graphic pen filter used.

Finally, I pulled up the Hue/Saturation menu and made adjustments. I clicked on the box labeled “Colorize,” and adjusted the other sliders until I had something that I liked. You’ll need to do some experimenting, but your end result should be a high-contrast version of the image that you started with, although depending on your settings, there will be some amount of detail in the image. What you end up with is basically black-and-white (or whatever color you picked in the Hue/Saturation menu), without intermediate shades of gray.

Tip: work on a copy of your image, so you don’t accidentally save over a photo that you want to keep.