Photo Friday: South Yorkshire (Picture Post)

Here are a few photos from my trip to visit my boyfriend in Yorkshire last week. Oddly, I didn't take that many photos (if you exclude all of the times I shoved my camera in my boyfriend's face, I do that a lot).

The three cats pictured here are Beano, Shadow and Biscuit. I need to make it my aim to get photos of Phoebe and Makker, the other two cats belonging to my boyfriend's family. I love them all. I would like a cat.  And a dog, the dog is Fizz.

All of these photos are unedited, taken with a Canon 550D and a 50mm f/1.8 lens. 

Workload Wednesday: Stuff

It’s Workload Wednesday and I am not entirely sure what to write. 

My life is filled with sorting out train tickets and washing clothes that ended up smelling like mould in my old University room and trying to sort out all of the stuff that I have. Fitting that into my tiny box room is going to be impossible. It’s quite daunting. It takes up half of my living room.

SOS. Send help. I am buried under stuff. Might suffocate. 

Manuscript Monday: Crazes

And so the bedraggled female has returned from her holiday to bring you the next Manuscript Monday post. The holiday was lovely, thank you for asking. (Even if you didn’t want to ask, that statement was aimed at the blog itself. It misses me so when I am away.)

This week, I won’t so much be writing about the writing process because I managed to not get any writing done when I was away.

I have been thinking recently, very much ahead of myself, about when to send manuscripts to publishers. Novel #2 in particular. I’ve seen several tweets about what certain agents want at the moment and what they are currently getting sick of. In its current state, Novel #2 is something that some agents have seen too much of in queries at the moment. This would pose a problem if it was anywhere near being a complete manuscript. Luckily for me, it’s not.

So, what should you do when your manuscript is ready but agents aren’t looking for what you’re ‘selling’? Wait. Follow people that are in the industry, see what’s popular and what’s not. You can either listen to that or discard it. I would probably listen but that doesn’t mean that you have to.

You could send out your manuscript and hope that one of the agents you query gets hooked onto it but it might take just as it would if you waited until agents were more susceptible to your idea. It might not. You might be the author that changes that agent’s opinion.

There will always be lulls in certain crazes in fiction. There will always be times when agents are saying ‘enough, no more vampires’ (vampires could be replaced with anything). On my twitter feed I saw my ‘craze’ appear in a list of things a certain agent didn’t want to see at the moment, there was, of course, a twinge of pain in there; a little bit of fear bubbled in my stomach, I may never get my writing out there purely because of what I am currently writing about.

But it’s OK. By the time Novel #2 is ready, it may well be in demand. It may not. I think I’ve said before that I’m not even sure if Novel #2 will ever materialise on bookshop-shelves; this is still true.

I don’t know what the future is for Novel #2.

Is this something you’ve experienced? Are you worried that your manuscript might fall into a genre that is ‘too popular’ or one which is ‘not popular enough’? Do you have a plan for when your manuscript is ready to fledge?  

Combination Post: Workload Wednesday & Photo Friday

So, this is a combination post because I am all over the place at the moment and my workload is photography related. I am currently still editing the wedding images around moving back to my home town post-university and visiting my now-long-distance boyfriend. As such, I may not be posting next week due to the aforementioned visiting. Many apologies.

So (hello, repetitive paragraph starter), on Wednesday, I packed up all of my belongings ready to go home the next day. I realised I had both more and less things than I originally thought. It was a strange sensation; I’ve seen all of my things packed up in that way before when going to and from University before but seeing them there for the last time, in that city for the last time, was odd.

Of all of the three houses I lived in during my time at University, the last one is perhaps the one that holds the most significance, as the year held the most significance to my degree. In that house, I met my boyfriend, I applied to my MA, I got my internship for the summer. My future began in that house.

When I began my BA, I had no idea what I wanted in life. I wanted to write, obviously; you don’t do a degree in Creative Writing if you don’t want to write. However, I knew that only the very lucky get to live off of their writing. Now that I’ve finished, I know almost exactly where my life is going and how it’s going to get there. It’s both exciting and terrifying.

University is almost like a rebirth. Almost.

I have changed a lot over my three years, matured, emerged from my ‘shell’, but I have always been true to myself and that’s something I think is very important.

In other entries I might write more about the course itself and what I learned from it but right now, I think I’m slightly overwhelmed by the fact that it is over. I am not sure it has sunk in that I won’t live in Chester again; in September I won’t be moving back to complete another year. In September, I will be at Oxford Brookes.

I have no doubt that my next University experience will be vastly different to my last. The campuses are different: one looks old, one looks new; one is smaller, one is bigger; one was easy to navigate from the start, the other looks terrifying. This course only lasts for a year, my BA was three. The subject matter is different but still related.

I am so excited. I cannot wait for my future. But, I am still sad that this chapter of my life-book has come to an end.

With that in mind, the Photo Friday portion of this post is going to contain only photos. Photos of the most beautiful day that I have ever experienced. If you are interested in learning more about that day, I have included a write up of it (from my old blog) under a jump break.

Goodbye, Chester.

 

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Manuscript Monday: Nine Sentences

I think, in this first Manuscript Monday post, I should explain my writing a little bit. I write: poetry, a lot of poetry; flash and short fiction; and am currently writing two novels. By accident.

‘How?’ you ask. Well, I started writing my first as part of my degree. The Writing Project was my degree’s equivalent of a dissertation; I handed in the beginning of that novel. Novel #1 literary fiction, a novel in fragments.

Novel #2 (YA, post-apocalyptic) happened in the shower. I had an idea and I knew I had to write it. I managed to hammer out 15,000 words in three days. I’m now on 17,000. Novel #2 may never see the light of … bookshelves. However, it will be finished before Novel #1.

A few days ago, when hanging around on Twitter, I saw this link – I can’t remember who posted it, unfortunately. I had never thought of compressing my manuscript into nine sentences; in fact, before I read this article, I’d not thought something like that was possible but I did it and magic happened. Not real magic, I didn’t shoot fire out of my hands (though that would be fantastic).

Novel #2, while being a shower epiphany, did not have an ending. I knew what was happening up to a point. Then, nine sentences later, I had an entire novel. So, there will be other things that happen which are not in those nine sentences, which have not yet climbed themselves out of my brain matter but I have a structure now beyond that which happened in the shower.

While I’ve not written much in the last week, I know where I’m going and I know where I’ve been and that is certainly something.

It is unnerving how quickly this novel has happened, I don’t tend to write very quickly, I like to let my work sit for a while before thinking that it’s terrible and starting again. (It’s an unhelpful trend that I really hope to break.) Having nine sentences in front of me that tell me what is going to happen and knowing that it’s right and even to an extent how I will be getting to each point is refreshing.

I will definitely be trying this method on all future novels (except perhaps Novel #1, which rebels against being compressed into a few sentences).

Have you tried the nine sentence technique? Did it reveal anything you didn’t know? Are there any other techniques that follow the same vein that you have found useful? 

Photo Friday: The Three (Positive) Extremes of Planning

Welcome to the first Photo Friday post on In Progress. I’ve not been able to do much personal work recently, as I’ve been working on things for clients (a beautiful wedding, for example, a few images will be appearing in a Photo Friday near you once they have been delivered to the couple – I can’t wait to share them!). So, this week I decided to remedy the situation.

Mythos has been the most recent of my personal shoots and I think demonstrates the three (positive) extremes of planning. The idea began when I received a beautiful hand-crafted mask from the highly talented Silvie, I instantly knew who I needed to model it; I am lucky enough to have some very co-operative and very beautiful friends (often with wonderful hairstyles) and Hannah was lovely enough to take half an hour or so out of her day to allow me to get the images I needed. I tend to take longer with my shoots but this happened quickly, my mind had already decided two of the images I wanted and the third (first, technically) was a spur of the moment ‘this-set-needs-to-include-three-images’ impulse as I was walking to the location. 

So, the three positive extremes of planning (perhaps not the only three but the three I encounter the most):

The Impulse Plan, planned only a few moments in advance. This image, as above written above, was not really planned. As I walked to the shoot, I decided I wanted an image that focussed on the face behind the mask without revealing it. I shot it very quickly; it was mainly in the editing that this image took shape. The editing was not at all planned, it was very experimental. It’s perhaps not what I would suggest when walking into a conceptual shoot, a shoot all about the ‘idea’, but instinctive planning definitely has its place.

The Exactly-As-You-Planned-It Plan. This image looks exactly how I pictured it, down to the editing, the angles and the lighting. I knew exactly what I wanted from it and I think it was that certainty that made it happen. Things don’t always end up how you plan them, there are so many things that can go wrong, especially on location but when it does, it feels good. This is my favourite image of this set. Everything about it was part of my plan. (Please note: I do not always write or draw out my plans, sometimes they are purely mental, as this one was.) I think it is very rare to have an image happen exactly as you planned it but that doesn’t make it any less wonderful when it does. It could only make it more wonderful.

The Not-Exactly-But-Better Plan. After watching season 3, episode 3 of [Framed] and being introduced to the beautiful image created by Brooke Shaden, I knew that I had to do something along that vein with the mask. I envisioned a god. The mask was always in the middle of her back but originally she was only going to have the one set of arms. I thought I had the perfect idea, I thought I had it in my head exactly how I wanted it but then when I was with Hannah and we were taking the shots, I wasn’t sure how I wanted her arms – I didn’t even shoot my original pose idea, it went out of the window when the possibility of giving her more limbs and I am very glad it did. Hannah was amazing at moving her hands, my favourite of her hand poses are not actually in the final image (I might use them in something else, we’ll see). With each pose change, I could see this creature, feminine, powerful and impossible and I knew that despite my plan (which I had mused over for days) it was exactly what I wanted.

I owe a lot of the editing inspiration in this set to Brooke Shaden, I think. Miss Aniela was also on my mind when thinking about pre-existing images with multiple limbs. Both are incredible artists and should definitely be checked out.

So, that was my experience. Have you had any instances where planning has given you completely unexpected results? Do you plan or do you let instinct dictate your images? How much detail do you put into your plans if you use them? 

Introduction

Dear World: Hi. 

I am Elou and I am a freelance photographer, poet/author and publisher in training. I thought it was about time I put together a proper blog that isn't my tumblr. In that blog you will find inspiration, pointless gifs, things I like and sometimes my photography. 

This blog will be updated three times a week (time-permitting) under three headings: 

Manuscript Monday: In which I write about the process of writing a manuscript and the progress of my own. Manuscript Monday will also feature posts about writing in general and other forms such as poetry. I intend for this to be helpful as well as being my outlet so there will be links! 

Workload Wednesday: In which I write about anything work related. In July this will consist of Intern Insights (I like alliteration, it's just one of those things) while I am on my internship, from September it will be dealing with my MA in Publishing, in between it could be anything from Temping to the Chapterhouse course I am working on to the progress of The Paper Tree. Mostly publishing related, Workload Wednesday will give you an insight into what I am doing professionally and academically. 

Photo Friday: In which I write about photography, my own and others, tips and techniques, before and afters, walkthroaghs. Sometimes just image posts. I will also be delving a little bit into the business side of things, marketability, making leaps. 

So that's how it works. 

Today, I will not be posting the first Workload Wednesday post because I should be revising. However, next week will be a reflection on my BA, which, as of tomorrow, I will have finished. Post-exam jitters to follow. Pre-exam jitters commencing now. 

See you on Friday for the first Photo Friday post!