Enjoy the Process
My work has found a few new readers in the past six months, and I'm grateful for that. I enjoy sharing my thoughts and hearing others respond.
Recently I've switched focus from sending work out. I'm spending more time at the page, scribbling, creating and revising and editing, and finishing commitments to others.
It's so easy to focus on the product--the publication. "Where have you been published?" "My work has appeared in x, y, and z." It's how you connect with the outside world.
But I'm ready to be back at the page. So I'm telling myself, "Enjoy the process."
Recently, my husband and I were driving home from town at the time of the evening when a large, near-full moon was rising. Even though I knew better, I couldn't resist trying to get a picture of it.
Here's what I got.
Yup, not only TRYING TO TAKE A PHOTO FROM A MOVING CAR, but impeccable timing: behind the road sign.
More impeccable timing: behind the roadhouse.
At least in this one you can kind of see the moon, though also: hydro tower.
You can see another hydro tower looming on the left, but this one also exposes (haha get it?) the sheer folly of trying at all to 1. get a great shot of a rising moon 2. from a moving car 3. with a cellphone camera.
I'm sure "real" photographers could achieve results that are SO MUCH better than this, even with the same parameters.
But, as it turned out, the results weren't the point.
Just trying, even though I knew all the layers of folly, was worth doing. It let the two of us share a project--on a drive home that we've made a million times, at the end of a long day, in the brief respite between spending money at the grocery store and stocking the kitchen shelves.
The process was fun.
And I've been enjoying, somewhat, the process of creating new work, sculpting new visions of existing work, idly dreaming new dreams of different kinds of work.
The results may well be the writing equivalent of blurry, ill-timed photos of a rising moon. But that's okay. It's challenging and rewarding. And that's sometimes fun, and sometimes even better.
Recently I've switched focus from sending work out. I'm spending more time at the page, scribbling, creating and revising and editing, and finishing commitments to others.
It's so easy to focus on the product--the publication. "Where have you been published?" "My work has appeared in x, y, and z." It's how you connect with the outside world.
But I'm ready to be back at the page. So I'm telling myself, "Enjoy the process."
Recently, my husband and I were driving home from town at the time of the evening when a large, near-full moon was rising. Even though I knew better, I couldn't resist trying to get a picture of it.
Here's what I got.
Yup, not only TRYING TO TAKE A PHOTO FROM A MOVING CAR, but impeccable timing: behind the road sign.
More impeccable timing: behind the roadhouse.
At least in this one you can kind of see the moon, though also: hydro tower.
You can see another hydro tower looming on the left, but this one also exposes (haha get it?) the sheer folly of trying at all to 1. get a great shot of a rising moon 2. from a moving car 3. with a cellphone camera.
I'm sure "real" photographers could achieve results that are SO MUCH better than this, even with the same parameters.
But, as it turned out, the results weren't the point.
Just trying, even though I knew all the layers of folly, was worth doing. It let the two of us share a project--on a drive home that we've made a million times, at the end of a long day, in the brief respite between spending money at the grocery store and stocking the kitchen shelves.
The process was fun.
And I've been enjoying, somewhat, the process of creating new work, sculpting new visions of existing work, idly dreaming new dreams of different kinds of work.
The results may well be the writing equivalent of blurry, ill-timed photos of a rising moon. But that's okay. It's challenging and rewarding. And that's sometimes fun, and sometimes even better.