2020 was a great year to escape.
At the beginning of the year, my goal was to read 26 books — figuring one book every two weeks was doable and would still feel like an accomplishment. Once the pandemic started, I was devouring books at such a fast pace I immediately doubled my goal to 52. I read 58.
As I’ve said before:
“…after realizing the vast majority of the books read in college and ones I largely consider favorites were all by white men, two years ago I set out to change my reading habits. It’s one of the resolutions I’m most proud of from 2018.
Why is this important to me? Because people write about what they know and who they know, and then that becomes what you know. I recognized that while I’d been reading some great books written by white men they offered a really narrow vantage point. And I noticed that there was a huge blind spot in my love of literature because my bookshelves were full of a very male, very western perspective — one that’s at times patriarchal, one that touts masculinity as the foremost virtue, one that exudes entitlement, one that can be misogynistic, and one that often excludes women and people of color as protagonists and heroes.
So, in short, I realized that there was a problem with what I was taking in.
And I set out to change that. I made it a goal to seek out new voices.”
How’d 2020 end up? 59% of the authors were white / which means only 41% were by authors of color. And 71% of the books I read were written by women / or 29% by men. I see some definite room for improvement. But overall I’m pretty happy with the depth and breadth of the books I read this year, including working in some classics like Their Eyes Were Watching God, Sula, and 1984. I was transported to the Dominican Republic, Nigeria, Haiti, a fictitious Jewish shtetl set in a remote part of Alaska, small Southern towns, and Hogwarts. I was also finally given an excuse to read Harry Potter. And once I started, I couldn’t stop. A magical make believe world, complete with its own language, sport and spells captivated me and provided the perfect escape during the pandemic.
As far as my favorites go (or in case you’re looking for something good to pick up next), I gravitated toward fiction this year, purely to leave this world and enter another one. So this list is heavy on the fiction.
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson
Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips
A Man Called Ove by Frederick Backman
and Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
…have all stuck with me. They were all great stories, that were incredibly well written and had something in them that grabbed ahold of my heart and twisted.
I also probably thought about, learned more from, and since referenced Isabel Wilkerson’s _Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent _more than any other book I read this year. It makes connections between the caste systems in the US, Germany and India that I’d never even considered before, and throws in some mind-blowing historical context about how these systems came to be and how they’ve persisted.
Happy reading, y’all.
Here’s a classic slice of Americana from one of the lucky few who spent the majority of their careers backed by National Geographic. Bill Allard’s “Portraits of America” gives you a pretty good overview of all the projects he worked on over the years: from from blues clubs and juke joints to lake life to the Amish and Hutterites to rodeos and the West. These were the stories that resonated. The ones that contained the people and the places he fell in love with. The ones he couldn’t let go of, even when they were done.
Not-so-tangential thought: Remember when publications gave you time and money, y’all? Months to make pictures. A budget to sustain you. That’s CRAZY TALK. Anyways, Allard spent 6 weeks in Lancaster, PA photographing the Amish for his first big story — as an intern at Nat Geo— just saying…
What I’ve always liked about Allard’s work (and try to bring to my own) is the way he captures the quiet moments. The boat at the lake through the raindrops on the window… The Amish boy turning looking back in the wheat field… The cowboy closing his eyes in the barn… They’re the off moments. The in-betweens. The fleeting glimpses and things on the periphery. But they’re the ones that I can’t stop looking at. They’re the ones that make me feel.
As a side note: I know an entire generation of newspaper photographers/amazing community journalists who did minor league or Little League baseball stories and tried to make pictures like Allard did on his epic baseball work. Myself included.
“The city of Benares is an intense combination of fairy tale and nightmare. It is a very holy place to people and every day they come there by the hundreds, or thousands. It’s a never ending pilgrimage. At the same time it’s such a dark place where death is ever present. There’s just this poetic chaos to it, a beautiful urgency.”
Back in the day, kids, before iPhones and apps with cool filters, we used "toy” cameras to get that look. Those beautiful, imperfect, light-leaked, slightly out-of-focus, ethereal images that the Holga and Diana cameras gave us drew us to them. The fact that you never quite knew what you were going to get intrigued us. The fact that it was film meant something too. Though we didn’t have a choice. This was a time before digital. A time of magic.
Israeli-born photographer Michael Ackerman was living with his grandma in NYC, and working on projects about religion (and death). And he got the itch to travel and work on something bigger, something more… And so he went to the Philippines to photograph live crucifixions, and since he was already half way around the world and had already paid for this crazy expensive flight to get there, he detoured to India on the way back. And he got sucked in and drawn back again and again.
He made several trip to Benares, India and also a trip to the a nearby city to document a pilgrimage 45 million people make to bathe in the rivers during “Ardh Kumb Mela” between 1993-1997. “End Time City” was published in 1999. I give you that timeline because I graduated from college in 1999. I started seeing some of this work (though I can’t remember how, maybe in magazines or in contests?) while I was still in college. Everyone in my small photo circle was talking about it.
We were all shooting with our Holgas and Dianas and handmade matchbox pinhole cameras and trying to push the envelope visually — but Michael was actually doing it. He was getting stuff published with them (and his Leica, too). He was making a book with work from those cameras. He was our hero.
“Seeing Gardens” is a meditative look at the physical world, but it’s such a good lesson in always looking, always seeing. Sam Abell’s eye for beauty and the natural world presents itself in lovely, unexpected ways — from the flowers lining the button holes in a Kashmiri man’s shirt to the floral head coverings of Russian women.
I love the subtle subtext that there’s strength in having that *thing* that’s yours, that thing that always draws your eye and your interest, regardless of assignment or location. Something that becomes a reoccurring theme in your life and work. Something you can turn into a larger body or work at some point if you keep looking and seeing.
I spent a few days in Japan for a job in 2018 and was hoping to go back for my birthday this year (but plans changed, thanks Covid-19!). And what I loved about my brief, but amazing time in Tokyo, Osaka, and Yoshino, was how nature was always seemingly, intentionally framed up by something man-made: a window, a door, an arch. Something urging us to look out and beyond where our feet were planted. Something reminding us that these trees, that waterfall, this hot spring… that’s the real art that could be hung on a gallery wall. So I appreciated seeing Japan through his eyes.
From greenhouses to Southern swamps to Tolstoy’s Russian garden, this book takes you places and teaches you things about slowing down and appreciating the beauty of it all.
Like the bookshelf itself, I’m approaching this alphabetically (for now). So here’s another great Sam Abell book. The first one was called “The Life of a Photograph.” This one is “The Photographic Life.”
What’s the difference you ask?
In the first one Sam talks more about the process and the art of seeing; it was about the framing in camera, how a photograph came together. and working through an edit (mentally and physically). In this book he talks more about being on assignment, and the highs and lows of being a photographer.
He includes personal photos of friends, family and a selfie while working, plus artifacts like a telegram he received from his bosses at Nat Geo while he was an intern there.
“The first photograph I made that mattered to anyone other than me is this one, of my father watching a train leave the station in winter,” he writes, while explaining the photographic outing he and his dad (that’s his dad and him on the front cover, btw) used to go on and the advice his dad would give along the way about S curves and diagonal lines and then some choice quotes like “bad weather makes good pictures” and “up here, not down there.” Sam won a prize in a high school photo contest with this train pic, and wonders what would’ve been of his photographic life without that little award.
My favorite frame just might be that football feature. It says so much more about life and politics than the game itself ever would have. I appreciate it for it’s timelessness. It could’ve been pulled straight out of Tod Papageorge’s “American Sports, 1970 or How We Spent the War in Vietnam” (which I’ll get to eventually on here!) or it could’ve been taken at an SEC game in 2019. Regardless, it’s such a great reminder to all of us to turn around. To work the periphery. To go where other photographers aren’t. To think about taking a step back and adding context to an image so it tells a bigger, better story.
The images (obviously) are gorgeous, but the writing is what really sucked me in. I think there’s something in here for every photographer. He’s honest about the plusses and minuses of loneliness on assignment. And the realities of remote assignments: from car crashes to capsized cameras and how he overcame them. It’s a bit like peeking into a journal, one you might have even written yourself.
One of the highlights of GeekFest St Pete was having Sam Abell there. One of my favorite memories is of him just hanging out and playing shuffleboard with all of us that weekend.
He also spoke about a lot of the work in “The Life of a Photograph.” He schooled us all about the process of composing a scene and waiting for a moment, waiting for the convergence of layers, waiting for an element of surprise — waiting for something to make the space you were initially drawn to come to life. He reminded us to not only trust our guts, but to then be patient.
The writing in this book is worth reading. It’s great insight into his approach, and it articulates what a lot of us may think but aren’t saying. “It often begins imperfectly. Life rarely presents fully finished photographs. An image evolves…”
One of his most iconic images is that branding scene from Montana. Seeing a contact sheet of that image, you come to see the subtle shifts in positioning and framing, you watch the layers come together, you see this moment happening, and then… and then… THAT RED BUCKET. This frame is all about the red bucket.
Another photo of his I’ve always been drawn to is the one from Eddie Leonard’s Sandwich Shop. My goodness is that image painterly. It’s like a scene straight out of a Hopper painting. It’s the quiet that draws me in; it’s the man’s look that makes me stay. I live in DC now, and sadly, that location of Eddie Leonard’s no longer exists. But my guess as to why Sam was there is because 17th and M Streets is where the National Geographic building is. I’d like to think that it was his spot for lunch when he was an intern, or a place he’d fondly pop back into when he was back as a staff photographer coming into town for an edit. Probably a nice bit of respite after a crazy whirlwind trip. I hear their sandwiches were great, too.
Over the years these two bookshelves have been arranged in different ways. Once by color, which looked great until I realized I couldn’t actually find anything because half of the spines are black and titles would just get lost there. Then I sorted them by people I thought would be friends in real life, or at least enjoy each other’s company — which totally made sense to my brain but nobody else could find anything. So now it’s alphabetical. Boring, but practical.
When I was a staff photographer I’d often get to mentor the interns. And a big part of that was introducing them to other people’s work. It was equal parts inspiration and education, and it was usually my challenge to them. OK kid, you need to learn to expose for the highlights — here, start with Alex Webb. Oh, you want to do a portrait project, do you know Ben Watts or Naomi Harris’ work?
They are packed with photo books and a handful of random tchotchkes and and ephemera I’ve picked up on my travels, as well as a dozen old cameras. I love that friends’ books are interspersed throughout and equally as inspirational. I love that Nachtwey and Neelman are side-by-side. They’ve been to a lot of the same crazy parts of the world, but to photograph drastically different things there. They’d have some fun conversations. And what a great shelf to share with Meiselas, Milach, and Moriyama, too.
My best friend Josh Ritchie said he would NEVER help me move again, after carrying hundreds of pounds of books up and down flights multiple times. On my last two moves — to LA and then DC — I’ve called professional movers.
Since I’m home now, and spending a lot of time in my office during this time, I thought I’d start sharing these books with you. I have favorites that I go back through often, and others I haven’t seen in a while. So it’s fun for me to go back through them. It’s kind of like catching up with old friends.
Get Your Culture On
Looking for something to do while you’re stuck indoors:
I’ve been doing a lot of NYT Crossword Puzzles, reading a lot, catching up on movies, firing up the old PS2 and practicing my Tony Hawk skills, and binge watching shows (like Love is Blind, don’t hate….). Here are a few other things you can do right now if you’re going stir crazy:
These 12 Famous Museums Offer Virtual Tours.
Sure we all know iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, and HBOGo, but what about all these great indie, foreign, and arthouse films on Janus Films/Criterion Collection.
If you have a public library card, check out all the great classic movies (and some surprising newer ones, too) to watch for free on Kanopy.
The Metropolitan Opera is offering free nightly streams from their archives.
And several more Philharmonics are playing to empty audiences solely to livestream them to us. The Berlin Philharmonic is free for the next 30 days.
Yo-Yo Ma is sharing videos of him playing cello on Twitter
If you’ve ever wanted to try yoga or wanted to learn how to mediate, you can, in the safety of your own home.
Learn a language with DuoLingo, so when you can travel again, you’re ready.
And, of course, there are some great Ted Talks you can catch up on. I’d start here with the 25 most popular Ted Talks of all time.
Books to Read While You’re Quarantined
I read. A lot. Always have.
But after realizing the vast majority of the books read in college and ones I largely consider favorites were all by white men, two years ago I set out to change my reading habits. It’s one of the resolutions I’m most proud of from 2018.
Of the 32 books read that year, 75% were by women & 44% by writers of color.
Why is this important to me? Because people write about what they know and who they know, and then that becomes what you know. I recognized that while I’d been reading some great books written by white men they offered a really narrow vantage point. And I noticed that there was a huge blind spot in my love of literature because my bookshelves were full of a very male, very western perspective — one that’s at times patriarchal, one that touts masculinity as the foremost virtue, one that exudes entitlement, one that can be misogynistic, and one that often excludes women and people of color as protagonists and heroes.
So, in short, I realized that there was a problem with what I was taking in.
And I set out to change that. I made it a goal to seek out new voices.
Changing up my literary diet was one of the most beneficial things I’ve done — so I decided to keep at it in 2019. Sadly, my numbers dropped a little in 2019.
Of the 36 books I read last year, 72% were by women & only 36% were by writers of color. I’ll try to do better this year because I’m still at it.
So, if you’re curious and looking for a recommendation or if you’re sequestered and practicing social distancing now, and looking for something to occupy your time and mind here are some of my favorite books from the last two years:
*** On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
The Animators by Kayla Rae Whitaker
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
Florida by Lauren Groff
(*** This was my favorite book in 2019, it was a beautifully written story from a son to his mother, and it was stunning, haunting, personal & real. It was all the things he wished he could say to her, and that she’d never read.)
And, if you were wondering, my favorites from 2018 were:
*** Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong
The Leavers by Lisa Ko
(*** My favorite of 2018. Jesmyn Ward Is brilliant. She’s a McArthur Genius and a two-time National Book Award winner. She’s also a 42 year-old black woman living in the South, writing about Southern life in a way that’s raw and visceral and with a hint of magical realism. She was raised in a small town in Mississippi and has created a fictional world on the Mississippi gulf coast that all of her novels seem to be set in and around. And boy do her stories move you.)
And if you want to friend me on Goodreads, so you can keep tabs on 2020, and so I can see what you’re reading too (because I’m always looking for a good book!) that’d be great. I always welcome new, smart friends who like to read.
Contests Schmontests: a few thoughts
It’s that time of year again… AKA photo contest time. I wrote this post 5 years ago after judging POYi for the first time, and housed it on a blog I’ve long-since scrubbed clean. But figured it was worth reposting now since the same conversations are happening now about the winning images.
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Judging POYi is such a unique experience that I wanted to share some thoughts and insights with you. From February 2-6, 2015, AP Photo Editor Jacqueline Larma, South African photojournalist (and last year’s 2nd place POY portfolio winner) James Oatway, WIRED Magazine Director of Photography Patrick Witty and I looked at about 10,770 unique images at the University of Missouri’s 72nd annual POYi competition.
We were judging the News Division — with categories ranging from Feature and Portrait to Human Conflict and Issue Reporting to Portfolio of the Year.
It was an incredible honor to look through the best pictures of the year to determine the VERY best. For me, the goal going into the week was not to not only recognize a very high level of work done this year, and give it a second life, but also to help establish the benchmark for the next year’s work. The magnitude of that task weighed heavily. And I guarantee you, it wasn’t taken lightly.
One thing we kept returning to as a judging team was that, above all, this is a photojournalism competition. At its most basic level, the photography has to be there. The quality of the pictures is paramount.
We removed several really good pictures from the competition because of carelessness on the photographer’s part (or sometimes on the part of the entry coordinator — yes some publications actually still have people that enter contests for their staff — which amazes me). Small things like a dirty sensor, poor toning, low res images and crops that left lines or borders on the edges were difficult to get past. This contest is for Pictures of the Year. Before you enter, take a second to ensure there’s nothing detracting from your image.
On a higher plane, come the intangibles. What is this picture saying? Is it truthful? Does the photographer have a voice and a vision, are they moving photography forward with their image? It’s not enough to simply show up (f8 and be there), point, and shoot. When everyone with a camera phone fancies themselves a photographer, we have to set ourselves apart by approaching situations skillfully — photography is, after all, a craft.
Moments always weigh heaviest for me. But there are other elements like mood, composition, light, and what the photographer is trying to say, that we took into account as well. It’s not enough to show up, you have to bring something to the image as well.
That said, judging is a very subjective process. Put different judges on any year’s contest jury, and the winners might be different. I think the phrase “best” isn’t necessarily a qualitative term, it’s a quantitative one. A majority of the judges have to agree that it’s the best, not all…
We asked ourselves: which pictures resonate with us…. four people from totally different and diverse backgrounds. One thing that was obvious is that when you respect what the other judges bring to the table, it’s an incredibly fascinating process to go through. We talked about the pictures, a lot. You have to be able to articulate why something is good, not just that it is.
But perhaps the biggest thing I learned from this process is that good judging is about compromise and consensus. It’s not a perfect process, no contest is, but when done right… it’s incredibly fair. Ultimately, the other three judges and I had the utmost respect for the work we were looking at, and wanted the best of the best to be recognized.
I say that because I got text messages, emails and phone calls after judging was over asking why a certain story didn’t win, or a certain issue not rise up and be recognized. And the bottom line is this: it’s hard to second-guess judging because it doesn’t come down to one person’s opinion… it comes down to a collective vote by just a handful of people that you’ve put your trust into.
I’ll also say this: you can only judge the work that’s there against other work that’s there. I know that there was some powerful work done in 2014 that wasn’t entered. I know that we saw better pictures of certain events or moments on the wires or newspapers, but that work wasn’t entered. You can’t judge a best of anything contest against the ideal stuck in your head — that’s not fair. You have to weigh the strengths and weaknesses of what’s on the screen in front of you — the end. (On a side note: I hate contests that refuse to award a 1st place, and just give a 2nd and 3rd… It’s a contest of, the year, you judge what’s there. Because that’s the best of what you’ve got. Period.)
Issue Reporting story was, in my mind, one of the strongest categories this year. And it was my favorite to judge. It shows how deeply people are digging in their own backyards to tell important stories.
Brad Vest’s look at the residents of a Memphis Housing project took us inside this place, put a face on the people there, had heart, and a beautiful aesthetic. The pacing and editing of it really felt like every picture pushed the narrative forward a little bit more, adding something to the story. Lisa Krantz’s story on obesity took us inside the life of San Antonio’s Hector Garcia. It had intimacy and depth. It told an important story about a powerful issue and did so with beauty and dignity for the subject. And notice how both of those photographers also had winning portfolios, because those issues, those in-depth stories, those important and incredible moments, carried them through.
The Staten Island Ferry Portrait Series that placed second resonated with me for the same reason: it’s such a good reminder that you don’t always have to go far or seek out the exotic to make interesting and compelling images.
Feature Picture Story was (again, in my mind, I’m not speaking for the other judges here) one of the weakest categories. It felt like a dumping ground for event coverage, for collections of images photographers were lumping together, for fluff that lacked both substance and style. Without purpose, 12 pretty photos from the State Fair do not a picture story make. Make those pretty images, but then ask yourself what you’re trying to say about this place, these people, this thing… AND FIND A WAY TO SAY IT. The feature stories that won, did so deservingly — especially the first place winner which is a quiet, yet almost lyrical way of telling a story. Different, yet emotive. Powerful, yet thoughtful. But the drop off was steep after the ones that placed.
Before we began judging the Newspaper Portfolio round, contest coordinator Rick Shaw reminded us that there’s no such thing as a perfect portfolio. And he’s right. Although some portfolios came close, ultimately, picking a winner came down to weighing the strengths and weaknesses of a body of work. For me, stories held more weight in the portfolio, because that’s really when you get to see a photographer’s strengths: how they work through a story, how they edit it, how their ideas translate into moments. And then how do the singles back this up?
It helps to look at things in a grid form, all together in a contact sheet, to see how things not only look, but feel, as a group. Are there any clunkers that are bringing it down? Is there a frame there that because of aesthetic or approach feels like it was shot by a different photographer? Are you putting a weak sports or spot news photo into your portfolio to fill a hole or is it really necessary and does it add to the work? It’s definitely given me a lot to think about when assembling my own portfolio for future contests.
The state of the newspaper industry is lousy right now. With layoffs and buyouts, losing experience and expertise hurts. I saw that come through in the editing time-and-time again. There were stories and portfolios that were too long, redundant, or full of too many pointless unnecessary photos. Those we eliminated. It sucks thinking, this is a great photographer… if only they had a good editor.
But the winners give me some hope for the industry. There’s no question that there’s still some amazing work out there by photographers who are findings ways to get it done. There are brave photographers willing to risk their lives to make images that show us the suffering, brutality and inhumanity of conflict. There are inspiring and innovative photographers who are finding new and different ways to make images. And there are concerned photographers digging deeper into their own communities to shed a light on the darkness.
Contests aren’t perfect. And entering them isn’t either. Just because a set of judges doesn’t pick an image doesn’t mean it’s bad. It just means it didn’t resonate with those judges in that place on that day.
And if you win something and have a photo that places, congratulations. It’s a feather in your cap, a pat on the back and hopefully some validation to take back to your bosses to remind them why we need the time and space to do what we do.
The opportunity to see how your own work stands up to the work that’s being chosen is a learning experience. And if your work’s not quite there this year, you know where the bar has been set. Hopefully it’s a motivator more than a deterrent. More than anything though, what I hope people get out of contests is the conversations they spark. The debates about photos are healthy, as long as they’re constructive.
And with all that said: the most important thing to remember is judging is incredibly subjective and it depends on a lot of factors coming together and aligning perfectly — one of the biggest being luck.
5 things
One of the best stories I’ve read in the New Yorker as of late is “Going For the Cold” by Rebecca Mead, about how folks in the UK have rediscovered and reclaimed the joys of swimming in lakes, rivers, and moats — even in winter and even when the summer temps aren’t exactly what I would consider pleasant. Even better though it the title the magazine piece was given online: “The Subversive Joy of Cold-Water Swimming.”
Here are 5 things I underlined in this piece, which was a joy to read:
1. Britain has an abundance of “blue space”—a term used to characterize rivers, ponds, lakes, and seas by people who argue for the health benefits of having access to them.
2. There are about forty thousand lakes in Britain, and it’s estimated that nobody in the U.K. is ever more than seventy miles from a stretch of coastline.
3. In some parts of the country there are same-sex swimming ponds. And one such place near Hampstead Heath in North London had a collection of essays about the Ladies’ Pond, “At the Pond,” published last summer. But what I found much more delightful is that the Ladies’ Pond has been celebrated less reverently by a Twitter parody account, Bougie London Literary Woman: “Doing a recklessly vigorous breaststroke, I have lost my pendant to the Pond. It shall come to settle on the silt, next to my heart, perhaps, which I lost to those murky depths long ago.”
4. The rule of thumb is to spend only as many minutes in the water as the number of degrees, in Celsius.
5. I also loved this definition, which I’d never thought of in these terms before but is totally appropriate and applicable to so many things: I stayed in just long enough to experience what might be called the smug reflex: the sense of satisfaction that comes from accomplishing, and even enjoying, something that most people would find unfathomably off-putting.
Jason Polan will be missed
Sometimes inspiration comes in tiny doses when we least expect it. Sometimes for me that something is whimsical or witty or so simple, really, that it makes me smile. Often times it has nothing to do with photography, and everything to do with making me see something differently.
Jason Polan’s drawings made make me smile. I appreciated the way he observed life and sought out to capture it, by drawing every person in NY (almost) or every piece of art in the modern museum of art — one fleeting sketch at a time. I respect big dreams in manageable chunks. I also dig the way he created a community with the Taco Bell Drawing Club, and wish more people would do more things like he did.
Though I didn’t know him personally. He will be missed.
Shameless Self Promotion
Newsletter: January 2020 | 90 seconds & 21 frames with Jane Fonda
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My New Year’s Resolutions
Thought I’d make a few resolutions for 2020, as they pertain to work.
1. FIND A PERSONAL PROJECT TO WORK ON - anywhere, anything, just has to be something I’m passionate about. The journey is the destination here. I’ve missed doing more of this since going freelance, and instead focused on getting work. Totally forgetting the mantra that I should be making the kind of work I want to get hired to do, and that good personal projects leads to good jobs down the road. Creating and digging in is what’s important, so let’s focus on that instead of the end goal of publishing.
2. GET REJECTED - I realize this may seem counterintuitive, but I recently read something online where a freelancer said that your goal shouldn’t simply be to pitch your own stories this year, it should be to collect rejections because that means you’re really out there pitching and trying to get work seen. Pitching 1 story is awesome. Getting 100 rejections is… even more awesome. I think this is an interesting approach. Kinda like the Babe Ruth approach to freelancing, right? Ruth is rumored to have not only hit more home runs than anyone else in his era, but also more strikeouts. And it’s said he only got those homers because he swung for the fences every single time.
3. UPDATE MY WEBSITE MORE - this goes without saying, and is just here as a friendly reminder that people doing the hiring are still going there more than anywhere else. Keep it fresh. Keep it current. Keep it interesting.
4. SPEND LESS TIME ON SOCIAL MEDIA - Will this be the year I finally leave Facebook? Regardless, I’d like to spend less time on social media and more time on things that matter. I’d like to remind myself that social media is not real life. Which means, I’d also like to spend much less time comparing myself, the assignments I’m getting (or not getting), my path to others.
5. CONSUME & CREATE - Good begets good. Crap begets crap. Look and listen to more things that will inspire - books, art, drawings, nature, photo books, music, podcasts. Consume and create (and remember creating doesn’t just mean making pictures, you can draw, collage, write, learn to paint or do pottery, etc).