Excellence
By Barbara O'Neal | August 27, 2008 |
As I write this, my bags are packed and ready to go. In about two hours, I’ll be heading for Australia, and one of my goals is to improve my photography. I’ve studied the art over the years, in high school and then college and then a little more later. A Minolta camera is one of the first things I ever saved money to buy (the other was a pair of extremely expensive hiking boots), and I loved it dearly, though I never had any illusion that I wanted to be a photographer. It was always writing I wanted. Pure and deep and true, an unmasterable passion.
For a long time, I was too busy with writing and raising a family to be able to squeeze in much photography. And yet, it is a hobby that pleases me deeply—the stillness and the singularity of a single shot, expressing something. A mood, a moment, a political statement, and passion for something. A couple of years ago, I made the plunge into digital, and have been working, sometimes clumsily, with it. This year, this trip, my goal is to get a little better.
Yesterday, I took my camera out into the moody day and shot some photos around town and the zoo, trying to remember all the things that make a good shot. At first, I was trying to remember everything, all at once—composition and color and freshness and line and everything else in every single shot.
After awhile, the lens itself seems to quiet something, and I can stop trying to be perfect, to get it right, and just enjoy the process and enjoy what I love to shoot. Perhaps it is a reaction to growing up in Colorado Springs, where there are such gigantic views, such amazing scenery, but I tend to like shooting very close. The center of flowers, the cap of snow steaming on a fence, a dog’s eye. But I also like color and pattern very much, and I can play with those.
In play, I learn. In play, I discover that it doesn’t matter very much that only one in ten, or one in 50, or one in a 100 shots is worth saving. Each shot teaches me what works and what doesn’t. What I love and what is true for me. Each one helps me learn more about the quest for excellence.
As with all my hobbies, photography teaches me things about my vocation, about my writing, which is much more than a career, much more than my work. One of the most gratifying and annoying things about a writing career is that novels are a form that can never be truly mastered. There are so many levels, so many things that go into construction and design, detail and wordsmithing, mood and dialogue and character, genre expectation and body of work expectations and editorial expectations….
So many things. It can be daunting. When I’m in the midst of drafting a book, trying to keep all those things in my head make me feel crazy and overwhelmed and discouraged. If I remember that there is plenty of paper to write on, and I can let myself play, then the work is more fun, too. In a rough draft, there are many thousands of bad sentences and misspelled words (it is a big fat lie that writers are good spellers—some are, but I know a lot who are not) and terrible composition. My rough drafts are genuinely rough and ragged things.
They are also layered with magic and surprise and beauty. Surprises and delights and insights that I often have no memory of capturing. Those are the 1 in 10 shots, the 1 in 50, and if I am lucky, the 1 in 100 shots that I then use to pin the draft to an level of excellence. It still never perfect, never exact…never finished, if the truth be told. Each book teaches me something. Each one reminds me of something I have not yet mastered, and each teaches me more about my subjects of study, my areas of play, my joy.
What do your hobbies teach you about writing?
Photo by Barbara Samuel, a writer afoot
Barbara O’Neal is the author of more than a dozen award-winning, bestselling novels, including the runaway bestseller, When We Believed in Mermaids, which has been published in more than 20 countries and spent many months on the Amazon Charts, as well as the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Washington Post bestseller lists. Barbara lives on the beach in rugged Oregon with her husband, a British endurance athlete who vows he’ll never lose his accent and their zoo of cats and dogs. You can find more information on her newsletter and where to find her on social media at barbaraoneal.com.
I like to bake, though I don’t have a lot of time for it these days. The sifting, the blending—it’s theraputic. I do plenty of mental plotting when I bake, too. I never thought about what my love of baking and writing have in common, but I guess it’s the effort to carefully bind disparate ingrediants into something coherant (and delicious!) that thrills me.
Great post, Barbara. And I love the photo…
“I discover that it doesn’t matter very much that only one in ten, or one in 50, or one in a 100 shots is worth saving.”
This is where you discover that being indecisive is silly. The more decisions you make, be it 50 or 100, the closer you are to a story you’re happy with.
Refusing to make a decision means you’re hovering at 1, and not going beyond that. When it can take 50 – 100 takes to get something right, hemming and hawing over a single take is obviously getting you nowhere.
That’s an incredibly valuable lesson to me, one that I sometimes forget.
In other words, it’d be better to write 50 takes on a scene than to obsess over a single draft of one. In the time it takes to decide what you want to do with that single scene draft, you could have found the best one out of 50.
It’s incredibly frustrating, but so important to remember.
First, have a wonderful trip to Australia…I hope you bring back wonderful memories and wonderful pics.
Cooking has become very meditative, my hands work, my mind wanders, it’s incredibly relaxing…and when one dish is done I get to start on a new one.
Photography is my “other thing,” too, and the best advice I ever received was years ago when talking to someone about photography. I mentioned to this accomplished photographer that I always had to take a lot of shots of the same subject to get a good picture, thinking I was doing something wrong. He told me I was doing it right–without even knowing it, I was “bracketing,” which is something nearly every good photographer does. Who knew?
And, when you think about it, it’s the same way with writing, just as you said. You have to write a lot of crap to find the gems. Kind of like panning for gold, too. Think of all the dirt you have to sift through before you find that kernel.
Checking in from an internet kiosk in Tasmania. (which is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!)…
Cooking is a great example, too. I love to cook and it does require allowing for some failure.
The photo is mine! :) Love the patterns.
Eric, the comment on making decisions stuck with me. I can get into loops of dithering and just freeze. Not helpful.