Not the Type To Write

If we have to give names to our obsessions, I am a photographer and a writer.

I used to be a snapshot guy but no longer. Nowadays, phones are for snapshots. I have no phone. I do have a number of cameras as well as a studio when I want to get away from ambient light. In the studio, I can achieve near perfect darkness.

I spent a lot of time over the last few months in the studio not taking pictures but devouring the darkness as it devoured me.

I've been lighting up the studio lately.

Pretty soon I'll go outside where the light is so overwhelming that I gotta wear shades.

There was very little writing during the collapse in the darkness.

Not a lot of thinking either.

Darkness Darkness

Then, a few days ago, I left the studio and headed to the office where the writing begins.

The office is decorated with ambient, ambient light.

Next thing you know, I'm thinking.

Next thing you know, I'm typing.

Words that stay.

These words.

They appear and soon there are a bunch of them. They cluster and coalesce. I acccept all of them as they are. I hate to change any of them.

I'd much rather retouch than rewrite.

When I retouch...I have powerful tools. I can dodge. I can burn. I can crop. I can clone. I can change the mood by changing the exposure. I can turn color into black and white. I can get rid of anything that I don't like.

I don't like a lot.

Editing is a differrent situation. I guess it goes back to the days before word processing. When someone said "this needs a rewrite", it meant putting the pen on the paper all over again, which to me was drudgery. Then came the move to the typewriter and the precision and boredom and time consumption of perfect typing.

In college, the awards went not to the best students but to the best typists.etc.

I didn't get a lot of awards and it almost killed my writing.

But now, Having emerged from the darkness.. I understand that rewriting is to retouching as writing is to photography.

I try to bring my retouching tools to my rewriting.

I've got a keyboard now. Typewriters kicked the bucket before my writing did.

I've got to admit...it's getting better.