Earlier last week, I had decided that I’d spend part of my weekend doing more brainstorming for the story I mentioned in my last post. There are two different paths I could direct the plot, but I figured that I’d finally sit down with my handy plot chart and decide which route I should take. Because at my current rate, there’s no way I’d be ready to start the actual process of writing in two weeks. (Life kinda got in the way and I had to push my project to the side.)
Except I did none of that this weekend.
Instead, I was drowning in photos.
On Friday, my dad finally decided to develop all the photos that have accumulated on the family camera and on his phone (plus a handful on my phone). Since I’m basically the family historian, I’ve been pestering him since January to take the photos to Walgreens already so I could fill in the photo albums. After all, there was a year and a half worth’s of pictures, and I wanted to have them in my hands as soon as possible.
Of course, nothing is ever as easy as you think.
We had to take four trips to Walgreens. Something about the app didn’t want to function properly on my dad’s phone, so there’d be gaps of pictures that didn’t get printed. And then some of the stacks that I received were all out of order. I had index cards to look off of for any photos that were derived from the camera; however, most of the pictures were pulled from the phone. That meant, when it came time to place the photos in their proper order, I had to constantly look at the phone’s gallery. Plus the camera itself, for the index cards doesn’t actually stamp dates on them.
On my quest for photo organization, I fanned everything around in me in a circle and began to sort chronologically. Everything to my left belonged to 2016, everything to my right were taken this year. One would think that I was about to engage in some sort of ritual. The albums were marked with post-notes of their pictures’ dates. (I can’t physically write the dates down yet, just in case I have to shift photos around and the days no longer matched.)
As of now, I’m only halfway done inputting all the photos within the albums. I don’t know the actual total of how many pictures I’ve been dealing with, but I know that it’s upwards of 700 photos.
While I’ve been figuratively crying to myself in a corner during this whole ordeal, it reminded me of the dreaded step of when I near the end of a large writing project. You see, once I finish writing the beginning of a manuscript (about 10k words), I then start skipping ahead. I have an idea of how I’d like the story to end, so I begin to write the scenes out of order. Basically, I write whatever I’m in the mood to write, because sometimes that’s the only way not to burn out or experience writer’s block. Once I’ve determined that I’ve written everything I can, then it comes time to piece everything together. I can’t even describe it as a puzzle because not all of the pieces are even there. I have to eventually fill in and write more scenes so I can thread all the already written chapters together and try to create some sort of cohesiveness. Overall, it’s very headache inducing.
And that’s what I’m dealing with in regards to these photos. For the most part, I know the order of events. But there are some minor details where I just don’t have a clue. (Like, why are there so many pictures of cars? At what point in time or event were they taken?) But like the entire writing process, sometimes things have to get messy and disjointed before they can finally come together to achieve your vision.
That’s always the hope, anyway.
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