The Wordsmiths Project Journal

The renown litblogger Michael Allen (aka “The Grumpy Old Bookman”) announced last year that he would be retiring from frequent 5-day-a-week blogging. He had calculated that since he had started the site back in March, 2004, he had probably written about 1,000,000 words in his blog. (See “Change of Policy“)

1,000,000 words!

In other words, if The Grumpy Old Bookman hadn’t been blogging every weekday for three years, he could have conceivably spent that time and creative energy writing several books or hundreds of articles – presumably with some financial remuneration associated with the endeavor.

For several months, I haven’t posted anything in The Wordsmiths Project Journal. Instead, I’ve done the following things:

• Helped care for ill family members.
• Completed and sent in my first ever grant application.
• Received my first ever grant – from the Lackawanna County Council of the Arts – for another exhibit of The Wordsmiths Project.
• Created and exhibited more of my fine art photo images (and made a nice number of sales).
• Continued work on my fiction.
• Trained our two year-old Golden Retriever – Watson – to be a therapy dog.
• Took Watson on our first visit to an assisted living facility and loved the smiles he gave the residents.
• Given various talks, lectures and seminars on The Wordsmiths Project, the publishing industry, writing as a career, photography, Photoshop, digital imaging and so forth.
• Launched an Internet radio show – The Photo Gurus – with Daniel.
• Helped Daniel and his staff at DigitalBenchmarks Lab, with various testing of imaging and photography hardware and software for clients, including my personal specialty of image quality analysis.
• And, as always, written a number of articles on assignment.

When I started The Wordsmiths Project Journal, I made a conscious choice to call it a journal and not a blog. That’s because my plan was to write in it when I had something to say and when I had time to do it.

My friend Ernest Lilly – the editor of TechRevu and SFRevu – told me that it wouldn’t be my decision what it would be called. That would be up to the blogosphere. But I think that those of you who do read this Journal will agree that it isn’t a blog, for the simple reason that I don’t have the time or temperament to keep up regular entries. Besides, I have more articles and novels to write, and new pictures to create.

However, I do promise that I will continue to write, when I have something to say that I feel would be useful and entertaining for folks interested in the publishing world, writing and writers.

And, yes, I will be getting back to doing more portraits for The Wordsmiths Project, so I continue to welcome nominations.

I am often asked what I mean when I say that my photography and writing inform each other.  Photography, storytelling, and, yes, life… it’s all about what we see, how we convey it to others and whether we can make it meaningful.

When I look at the world through the lens of my camera, I see so much more. My field of vision might be more limited, but everything becomes more focused, limned with greater clarity of shadows and light. Life resolves into aesthetic patterns and colors, giving definition and meaning, and making the ordinary everyday more noteworthy and memorable. It’s as though my lens has the magic ability to see through to the essentials of a moment or of a personality, to tell me story that I might have missed if it weren’t for my camera’s eye view.

I often think about my photography when I’m writing… visualizing what I want my readers to see, focusing my words as I would my camera lens. To go even further, I believe that being a photographer makes me a better writer, just as being a writer strengthens my photography.

Here are some of the things I’ve learned about writing, and about life, by watching the world through my camera lens:

• Stay focused on the central subject, but don’t lose sight of what surrounds it. The context (the background) of a picture (or a story) often gives it weight and meaning.

• Don’t stay stubbornly rooted in place. Explore different perspectives, even if it means getting down on the earth or climbing mountains.

• Crop (edit) until you’ve zeroed in on the essentials and have removed anything that might distract from what you want the viewer (reader) to see.

• Pay close attention not only to what the light illuminates, but also what lurks in the shadows and how it changes how you feel and think about the picture (or story).

• Small details, carefully captured, can often tell a whole story.

• If you’re going to lie, make it a glorious lie.

Because The Wordsmiths Project is a photo project, please feel free to email me (or put in a comment below) your questions about photography, as well as about publishing. 

I just started reading “The Thirteenth Tale,” by Diane Setterfield. I’ve been curious about it ever since my photo shoot and interview with Frank Wilson, the books editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer. Frank had told me that he was enjoying the controversy of having given a good review of a novel that his respected peer, Laurie Muchnick (the books editor of Newsday), definitely didn’t like. Using it as an example of how the Internet now gives readers the opportunity for greater dialog, Frank said, “I’m hoping that Laurie writes a review of The Thirteenth Tale that I liked so much and she didn’t. Because the minute that she does, I’m going to link to it and mine [from his blog], so that people can have both points of view. Remember the ‘Life of Brian,’ when he tells people ‘You’re all individuals, you can think for yourselves?’ Well, people can, and it’s very good for their minds to think for themselves.”

But what the first few pages of “The Thirteenth Tale” sparked for me was a very different controversy – the current obsession with memoirs that contain inaccurate, often invented accounts. After all, aren’t memoirs, and their literary cousins, biographies, supposed to give us the facts about a life?

“The Thirteenth Tale” centers on an aged best-selling author, Vida Winter, who would invent different histories for herself, whenever she was interviewed. At various times, she was “the secret daughter of a priest and a schoolmistress… the runaway child of a Parisian courtesan… an orphan raised in a Swiss convent, a street child from the backstreets of the East End….” Now, at the end of her life, she summons a biographer, Margaret Lea, and promises to tell her “the truth.” The novel slowly unfolds the story of Vida Winter’s childhood, through her storytelling and Margaret Lea’s investigations.

But what are the facts of a life fully lived, though not documented minute by minute, recording every day’s events and encounters until later – if at all? And what is the truth contained in those half-remembered facts? (I’m not talking about inventions or out-and-out lies. Those belong in a different discussion about why people choose to distort or completely make up their stories rather than try to recount what they remember.)

Vida Winter, in “The Thirteenth Tale,” says, “All children mythologize their birth.” But I would go further than that. I consider my own memory, and I can’t help but reflect that it is a personal mythology of my life – the moments I have chosen to remember because, in hindsight, they have become meaningful to me, to the person I have become since then. Are they accurate memories? Of course not. I’ve filtered them, filled in what I’ve forgotten with what might have been, and embellished them with each retelling.

However, should I choose to write a memoir – something I certainly don’t expect to tackle in this or the next decade – I can’t help but feel that the facts wouldn’t matter so much as what I choose to tell. That’s where the truth of me would be, in the telling. Not necessarily the truth of who I was when whatever event I would be relating occurred, but who I am when I would recount it.

I must admit that I haven’t read the memoirs that stirred the recent controversies. So, I can only speak in general terms. But I know from my own family and friendships, that even when memories are shared, they are seldom the same. Of course, the classic example of this is Akira Kurosawa’s movie “Rashomon,” in which the witnesses of a murder (including the ghost of the victim) all give conflicting versions of the murder.

But what about verifiable facts? I have made my living as a non-fiction writer for two decades. As such I’ve had to check any fact I’ve written, making sure it came from more than one source. If that weren’t possible, and the story still required that I include the information, I would use modifiers such as “he says,” “she claimed,” “the indications are,” etc. I would struggle with all the details, information and facts I could find and try to prove, until I would end up with a story that I felt told the truth of the matter – not my personal truth, but, hopefully, a neutral, unbiased truth.

However, as a photographer, I know that every story and every picture interprets the facts, presenting them in one manner or another. One example I often give is taking the photograph of an island resort hotel. If I angle my camera in one way, I will show you an idyllic, pristine beach with charming bungalows, and a beautiful couple sharing a delicious breakfast on their patio table. But if I angle my camera so you can see the trash dumpster and the shanty town in the distance, the story becomes something completely different.

Is it any wonder that I now prefer to write fiction? When I strip my tales of facts, then I can finally tell my own truths, rather than other people’s truths.