Welcome to the Dark Side. Now when I say "Dark Side" I am not implying that you are evil, or that I am evil, or that reading this blog in any way endorses evil. Its just that, in this part of the world, we are coming up to the shortest day of the year. For me, that means two weeks when I don't see my home town in daylight - except for the weekend. I like daylight. I like my home town. I like to see these things together. But with my train departing just as the sun starts to rise, and arriving home well past sunset, these are dark days indeed. Not bad days, just dark. Its about this time of year that I start to really look forward to spring. I have to get my Vitamin D hit at lunch time. Fortunately, winter in Victoria often affords beautifully cool yet sunny days. Today is one such day.

I finally finished my novel last year and put off the inevitably first edit, but after many delays completed that as well. This year I resolved to further refine the first few chapters with a view to sending it off to potential agents. After procrastinating for several more months, I managed to crawl across that imaginary deadline as well. Now they tell me I have to write a bloody five page synopsis and a cover letter! Don't they know how good I am at procrastinating?!? I'm actually writing this blog instead of writing the synopsis. And I'm supposed to give away the ending without all the pretty words that get you there. What's that about? Agents, publishers, editors! Its like they want you to write the book AND make it good or something.

My problem is I wax and wane in my own feelings toward the manuscript. Sometimes I think its great; other times I'm pretty sure I could wallpaper the house with the number of rejection slips I can expect. Obviously the publishing houses would have to send me several rejection slips each but I guess they have to be thorough. They wouldn't want me thinking there was hope because I only got the one rejection slip. Actually, my real problem is that I haven't gotten any rejection slips. That would be because no publisher has seen the novel because I don't have an agent because I have approached an agent because I haven't written the bloody synopsis yet. This could on a while.

One of the many things I use to distract myself from writing said synopsis is my new obsession, photography. I am trying to teach myself the finer art of using the manual controls. I read lots. I look at lots of pictures taken by people who know lots. I read some more. I take my camera into the field and promptly forget everything. I then take five or six hundred shots of one flower and then trawl through to find the one shot that doesn't look like I fell over while the shutter was open. I am finding my retention of crucial information such as f-stops and film speeds and how they relate to each other and the shutter speed to produce an exposure to be somewhat lacking. Also, I can't frame to save myself. If someone pointed a gun at me and told me to take a picture of a barn I was standing in, there is no guarantee the barn would actually appear in the picture. But I am getting better, and that's important.

I still haven't had a decent night to do much astrophotography but I think I've figured out a better way to mount the camera. My moon shots turned out kind of ok, but as I mentioned before, I forget all the basics as soon as I start taking shots, so I had the ISO speed wrong - again! Oh well. I guess I'll just keep going until I either become proficient or I fill up all the available hard drives I have. At this rate, I've got until the end of next week.

Ciao!

Thought for the Day: All is not lost! I just misplaced it a little.