I’ve been thinking about how I do more photography than writing these days. Taking pictures makes me think about things in a writerly fashion, in the same way that breathing used to make me think about things in a writerly fashion. Sometimes I won’t think about things in a writerly fashion for days, and then I’ll go to caption a photo real quick and get into explaining the photo and all of a sudden I’m writing when I hadn’t intended to.
The difference between writing and not writing has nothing to do with typing or the forming of sentences, I guess. And the difference isn’t intent, either. It’s like when I sing things in falsetto I think to myself, “This isn’t my real singing.” It’s not real writing or real singing unless I say it is, except when I start doing it without thinking and decide it’s real afterwards.
If any of you know of a support group for people who make things more complicated than they need to be, don’t tell me about it because I won’t make the first meeting on account of I’m too busy overthinking.
So here’s what I’m going to do. Several of my friends are doing those photo-a-day-for-a-year projects, and I’m going to join in. The focus for me, however, will be writing as well as photography. I’m going to describe the photo or write about why I took the photo or write about whatever the photo made me think of, even if it’s totally unrelated. I may not post every photo here every day (especially on the weekends), but I’ll try to do it most days, and all the photos will be on Flickr.
Here’s the first one:
This is the frost that was on my car this morning. I usually park in a carport, but yesterday I parked on the street because someone was blocking the driveway.
My car’s really old by car standards-it’s a 1996 Acura Integra named Betty. I’ve driven Betty since 1999, long enough that I can’t get comfortable when driving someone else’s car or a rental. It’s kind of falling apart in places, but it still drives and it still air-conditions, and these are the two important things for a car to do in Texas. The ABS went out a few years ago, but that’s less important in Texas, so Betty and I are still rolling along.
I’ll probably drive it until it falls apart or I do.
I really like both the frost picture and the idea of combining writing+photography for the daily challenge :)
Have fun with this project, hopefully the writing part will keep it engaging for you. I took on the photography part last year and stayed consistent with it for the first 6 months, and then tried to forge the timestamps on a ton of photos after that, and then in November I just… gave up. Which was sad. But I bet the writing will keep reminding you why you’re doing it. I really look forward to seeing these. :)
I have exactly the same relationship with my car, a 1996 Honda. I will drive that thing until it can’t go another foot. I recently had to spend $1,000 to keep the air conditioning feature, but after 160,000 miles, I couldn’t complain too much.
Though the actual stringing words together part is important too, writing sometimes is more about thinking writerly thoughts.
At least that’s what I tell myself.