A Book Project To Be

I want to make a book!

In the past I've dabbled in making print-on-demand books (I did a few for me and my beloved travel companion for holiday trips years ago and one for a finished book project that I printed and gave to two of my First Readers), but that was quite some time ago. I've thought of making another book or two through the years, but haven't really found a project that would fit in a book (or rather a project at all. I'm more of a single picture photographer). At least not until now when I'm in the middle of my 365 project. That's an obvious book in the making; there's a built in chronology, so I don't have to worry about the sequence of pictures, and all the pictures will be the same size and format, so layout-wise it is pretty easy...should I choose to do it the easy (and potentially boring) way.

Easier to do

Thanks to the fact that I'm now on a new PC using Lightroom CC rather than Lightroom 3 on my old machine, I can also do a book project right there in one of the modules, without having to go through Blurb's software BookWright, which frankly has some flaws, or Adobe InDesign, which I don't have even own.

All up to me

So....the obstacles are no longer there, which makes the creation of a book all up to me. Yay! That's also part of the problem...it's all up to me. Sadly, since I may very well be in the regional final for the procrastination championships! Anyway, I've begun to put my 365 images (by now I'm up to 51 images out of the 366 that'll make up this year's batch) into a book layout just to see if it'll be worth it or not. I've not decided on that yet, but at least there is a concrete folder and project file on the machine now that I can fiddle with as the year progresses, and maybe by the time our calendars say 2017 there could be a physical object that shows this year's effort in a nice way!

Post NaNoWriMo thoughts

It’s now December and that means this year’s edition of National Novel Writing Month is over. It’s a bit of a mixed blessing to be honest. I will not miss the feeling of “having to” write all the words just to keep up, but at the same time...when you hit your stride, your flow, it’s such a great sensation! That’s when you can easily chalk up 5,000 words in a day, while some days just typing 1,000 feels like you’re dragging an NFL linebacker up a hill!

My story this year ended up in the sci-fi field, partly inspired by the ongoing rendezvous with the comet 67P (I know it has a longer double Russian name but I can't spell, nor pronounce it). It also ended up with a lot of similarities with Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama. So much so that if I ever decide to do more with it than sticking the manuscript in a box I’ll have to do LOTS of rewrites. But hey, that’s what the months after NaNoWriMo are for! Right? Right!

Instead, these few weeks before it’s time to board a plane westward towards the Lone Star State I will spend some time on reading some fiction and edit my never-ending project (from here on called The Book That Shall Be Finished...or TBTSBF...hm...not sure that acronym is all that good). Anyway, it’s something that’s been on the back burner for much too long and I need to finish it to get it over and done, so it moves from the "To be Finished" to the "Done and Ready" pile, which is embarrassingly small in comparison.

I've also promised someone very dear to me to read the first book in the Outlander series before Christmas, so that's also on my list of things to do. It's a shame that the paperback version of the book that I've got has a really, teeny, tiny typeface and my eyes aren't what they used to be! I've given serious thought to borrowing my mother's magnifying rig that she used to use when she did needlework so that I can read the text without squinting myself silly! We'll see if I actually need to do that though. I hope not, because it does look somewhat silly to use that thing to read!

I hope the book is good...that’ll make it worthwhile. I've gotten great reading suggestion from this very person before, so I am counting on it being worth the "effort". 

A Tall Stack Of Papers

This website is called Tomas Nilsson Foto (since I am Swedish I spell it that way), and it's obviously no secret that I enjoy photography a lot (anyone unfortunate enough not to be able to make his or her escape fast enough will probably know that ;-)).

I do however have other interests that will show up on this blog from time to time. One of these interests is writing. I feel it is time for that now that the month of August is over and the next exhibition event isn't until October.

I've enjoyed reading since I figured out that those strange squiggles could be translated into words when you put them together; according to my mother the first word I ever read on my own at the age of 5 was Tobak (tobacco in Swedish). I don't know if that was necessarily a good thing, but there ya go.

I was one of those kids who played a little bit of Dungeons and Dragons in my teens, mostly as the Dungeon Master, sending my brother and other neighborhood kids on quests here and there. It was fun, but in the end they liked doing sports more, and I found it was more fun to write than to actually play the adventures (plus I wasn't really that good a Dungeon Master).

When I was in high school my best friend at the time wrote a book, and challenged me to do the same ("you always said you wanted to write...now get to it!"), so I ended up with a ghastly poor First Novel. It's got very few redeeming features, but at least it didn't discourage me from trying it again! In the ensuing years I've written a few other things, both longer works and short stories. It's never felt like I've made something worth sending to publishers, it's always been something I've done for my own enjoyment.

In 2008 my dear friend Montie told me about National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo for short-ish) and I thought was an absolutely hair-brained idea; write a 50,000 word first draft of a novel in 30 days. That felt impossible, especially for a devout procrastinator like me. But I figured I'd give it a go, since at the time I needed a jumpstart to my writing. That ended up as "The New Leaves", a book that I think actually does have some merits, a book that I think I'll get back to soon to expand certain parts that needs something more.

Six years later I am about to do the writing challenge for the sixth time and it is still a lot of fun! I especially enjoy the group of awesome friends I've made through the write-ins and get-togethers we've had through the years, people I would never have met otherwise! What this year's book will be about? I haven't got a clue, but hopefully I'll have at least a first sentence by the time November 1 rolls in!

Here's the beast, ready to fight me all over again...

That being said, there's been this project of mine that's been ”on-going” for many years now, a book that I've not been able to finish, nor let go my hold of. It's currently in its...probably sixth or seventh re-write at around 135,000 words, but I still don't feel it is really there. It's an intimidating stack of papers, but it's also a nice feeling to know that I've been able to put together the story at least this far! So I am going to have a crack at it one more time in the next few months, hopefully being able to finish it at some point. If nothing else it'll be a nice warm-up for the November NaNoWriMo event!