In Flight Again!

I think I’ve mentioned before that, when I’m not sure what I’m going to write about here, I look on my camera to see what might be on there.

It’s frequently a complete surprise what images I find there, which really shouldn’t be the case, since most of the time it’s only been a day or two since I snapped the pictures.

Short attention span much?

Except that’s not really true. While my attention can be diverted, usually my problem is getting too wrapped up in stuff so that I lose track of time and forget stuff. Like, say, the tea water boiling on the stove. I wish I could say that’s only happened once or twice, but I bet I’ve done it, oh, two dozen times at least. Now I actually set a reminder on my computer to go check it. Pitiful, I know.

In this way, the photos on the camera are like little notes to myself, to remind me of what I was thinking of or found interesting at that moment. Otherwise, I’m not one of those writers who writes notes to herself.

I saw a bit of advice the other day saying that writers should make notes with every idea or you’ll forget it and lose it forever. I just don’t think it’s true.

Admittedly, last night, David and I were talking about something and I thought, oh, I should blog about that in the morning and now I don’t remember what it was. But I’m not bothered about it because I truly believe that the thought will surface eventually, at the right time. If not, well, in the immortal words of Steve Martin, “It must not have been very important then!”

If you’re radioactive, you’ll remember eventually.

One thing that I do when I’m editing is I’ll think, oh, I really meant to add in this phrase or this idea or feeling. I’ll type it in and, two lines later? I’ll find that exact phrase. One day I’ll learn to read ahead and check to see if the past me already did what the present me thinks is so brilliant. One day I’ll also learn to trust myself.

Rarely do I find that I left something out of a story, mostly I’m refocusing the reader’s eye.

It’s funny to me, to look at these photos I took the other day. On Saturday we went to the mall to find the glassblower’s booth I spotted at Christmastime. Remember how I said malls didn’t have them anymore? Well ours does!

And they totally fixed my glass fairy, whose broken wings I bemoaned in that same post. The guy only charged me a dollar to do it. (I gave him $5 — not all miracles are costly.)

So, I snapped commemorative photos of the repaired fairy, for the triumphant return to flight blog post, since several people said the Broken Wings post made them sad. Witness my contract with the reader here: I’m providing you with a happy ending to the sad, sad tale of the broken fairy.

You can see, however, that I had issues with focus.

The camera kept “looking” out the window instead of at our main character, fairy reincarnated.

Some lovely nature shots there — not to mention the fabulous rain chain! — but the heroine is an unfortunate blur.

I finally figured out that I was too close to her and backed off. But then the secondary characters took over. Not that they each don’t have their own story. Just not this story.

At any rate, I’ve extended this analogy until it’s creaking, and you can see her at the top, in all her clarity and flightfulness.

That’s my take-away today: trust yourself, things can always be fixed, and sometimes all it needs is a little refocusing.