In which The Author signs up for the duration
Last year, as you may remember, I signed up for NaBloPoMo – National Blog Posting Month. The idea was to post a blog entry every day for the entire month. One friend of mine has done NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month – for the past few years, and she suggested that I should try it last year. I was obliged to decline politely.
I don’t find knocking out the odd 500 words (or more) a problem when the mood takes me. On the other hand, I found the prospect of coming up with a thousand words a day, every day, for a whole thirty days, an extremely daunting prospect.
I abandoned any idea of a career in journalism about thirty years ago, because I’ve always found it difficult to come up with something ‘to order’, so to speak. When I went back to university in 2009, the Monday afternoon Creative Writing workshop was a bit of a nightmare for just that reason. Having to sit down, try and focus, and ‘write about a pair of shoes’ (to give one example) was a real challenge. For that reason, I knew instinctively that producing a thousand words every day – with a proper narrative structure, and characters, and a plot, and a beginning and a middle and an end – would be way beyond my abilities.
That’s why I took the coward’s way out and went for the blogging option instead. I thought I could probably manage a quick post every day for a month. Even so, I found it quite a challenge – notwithstanding the hit-and-miss Internet access I was up against in Aberdare Library and elsewhere. In the event, I think I managed 29 days out of 30, with two posts on the same day to try and compensate for the missing one.
I’d already decided not to attempt NaBloPoMo this year when an email pinged into the inbox at the end of last week. This one seemed rather more manageable – a daily photo challenge called Photography101. Every day, the organisers send you an email with a subject for the day’s picture. It’s up to you to take the shot and post it on your blog, tagging it with photo101 so that other participants can find it.
So, starting on Monday (and barring accident or incident), I’ll be sharing a photo every day for the next four weeks. I’ve absolutely no idea what the subjects will be until I receive the email from the organisers. Brace yourselves for something other than the Decaying Buildings of the South Wales Valleys, folks!
I just hope that none of the assignments will involve using a tripod. My pal Clint and I were photographing the interior of St Elvan’s Church in Aberdare a couple of months ago. We were talking to Fr Robert and Christina when I heard a dull thud on the floor beside me. It turned out to be one of the legs of my trusty tripod. At first I thought it had just slipped out of the housing, but on closer examination I realised that the fixing had broken entirely. I’ll try and drop a subtle hint to Mother when she mentions Xmas, some time during the next couple of weeks.
Other than that, I’m prepared for any eventuality. I’ve even learned from my previous mistakes, and bought new batteries before the project gets started. Let snapping commence!
An Autobiography in Random Chapters 