new

So NaNoWriMo didn't work. I'm not sure why. I got just about to my word count on the first day, skipped the second day, wrote 4,000 words on day three, and then got stuck. I couldn't think of anything I wanted to say. I didn't have a character I felt connected to, I didn't have a plot point I wanted to get to, I didn't have a setting I wanted to describe, I didn't even have a snarky conversation that amused me enough to write down (I pretty much always have snarky conversations. Whatever else my story might be about, you can always count on snarky conversations at completely inappropriate moments). I gave up trying ages ago, but I wasn't going to come back here until November was over because blogging in November rather than writing a novel would be an admission of... something. I have no idea how my brain works. But I've decided to work on the basis that writing stuff gets me closer to being a writer than sitting around thinking about how I can't write a novel.

I've been thinking for a little while that I need something new to learn. I've stagnated. The things that were new to me aren't new anymore, they're just an accepted part of my life. Which is great, I love these things. But the highest points of my adult life have come when I'm discovering a passion I didn't know I had. It makes me happier, it makes me braver, it makes me friendlier, and because of that other good things start happening to me at the same time.

The first time this happened to me was with the camera. I'd hated cameras throughout my entire childhood and would run away and cry when I saw one. I got used to taking silly photos of my friends in the pub after I left school, but I couldn't understand why anyone would bother taking photos of things. It just seemed like a waste of film. (Yep, film.) I hung on to my crap film camera way after most people had switched to digital. I even tracked down another crap film camera after my original one broke, and that was not an easy thing to do in 2007. I'd taken maybe two rolls of film with it before I acknowledged that no, this really was a crap camera and all the photos looked terrible and maybe I should admit defeat and look into this digital nonsense.

I bought a digital camera and took it to the zoo. After about 20 minutes photographing seals and being increasingly thrilled and delighted with what was happening, I decided my new camera was the best thing ever and started carting it round with me everywhere. Everything was a photo opportunity and I loved it. I photographed everything in sight for about eight months, but I don't remember any photos I took until this one:


It's nothing much. But at the time, I genuinely thought this was the most impressive fucking thing I'd ever done in my life. It's not just a photo of a thing I saw, there's forethought and viewpoint and some measure of artistic fucking merit in that thing. I got myself a Flickr account for the express purpose of putting that picture on the internet, and though I've deleted a fair few of my older photos, that one is there for good. First photo on Flickr. It means something to me.

I started researching. For the next year or so, the internet was composed of three things: photography tutorials and advice; other people's photography; and diary sites where I could blither on about photography and how amazing it was. I quickly came up against the limits of my camera, which was on the fancy end of point-and-shoot, and when my parents offered me a graduation present I asked for a DSLR. My mother asked if I was sure I wouldn't prefer a piano (an instrument I'd had one lesson on and hadn't touched since), but they gave me what I asked for.

I got my D60 in June 2008 and it's probably still my favourite thing that I own. We still go on walkabouts together, and my photos get better as I sharpen my understanding of my camera and its relationship to the world. Over the last six and a half years, my D60 and I have taken photos of friends, of family, of fireworks, of woodlands, of weddings, christenings and graduations, of Rome and Venice and Prague and Cancun and Las Vegas and New York, of beaches and zoos and cemeteries and mountaintops and of me doing stupid things in any or all of these places. My love of photography is still one of the most important things in my life.

But it's not new anymore. I don't have the rush that I got when I first started learning photography (or dance, or practical employment law). Coming to a new skill with zero background knowledge means that literally everything there is to know about that thing is sitting there waiting and I try to take in as much of it at once because of course I do. Then once I have very basic knowledge I start discovering all the other interconnected spheres and I start studying fashion photography (or spending hours on end amassing an enormous collection of blues music, or reading all the unnecessary case law I can get my hands on). I don't have time for anxiety or to second-guess myself, because I need every spare brain cell to learn as much as possible in the shortest amount of time. But the point comes where I basically know how it works, and now I have to get good at it. And that doesn't feel like a world full of barely-tapped possibilities; it's a slog. An enjoyable slog, but still a slog. Progress slows down to the point where I can't see it for myself anymore, and I start to see my own intrinsic limitations - things which I could work on, but probably never get over to the degree I'd like. I have no intention of abandoning the things I've learned at the point where it gets difficult, but I miss the newness. And I feel that if anything's going to pull me out of a stagnant patch, it's the newness that'll do it.

So now I need something new, completely new, to learn. I'm taking suggestions.