365 Photo Project - Day 76

Taken: March 17, 2010, 11:30 a.m.
Location: Healdsburg, Ca

It broke 70 degrees today and it's gonna keep on breaking it for the next week. I don't know about you but I'm ready for the sunshine. Feels like I've been living under the ground, like I've been hibernating, waiting for that moment when I can open my eyes again, come out of the darkness and step into the light once more.

I'm not complaining. Just happy to be warmed by real sunlight, to feel like spring is finally here. I can't help it. It gives my heart a wonderful weightlessness, like gravity is everybody else's problem. I'm a sap that way. I mean in case you haven't noticed by now.

Got a pretty good day's work in today, another  benefit of the upturn in the weather.  Managed to step out for a few minutes late in the day. Just long enough to get a good whiff of things to come. I'm such a sucker for this time of year when winter is nearly dead and buried, and there's nothing but possibility in the air. Everything is out there for the taking, anything can happen and maybe, just maybe this is going to be my year.

Told ya' I'm a sucker.

I wish I could bottle that feeling and take it out whenever I needed a little extra motivation, a little pick-me-up from the daily grind of going nowhere fast. It's like a great song you haven't heard in forever. Those first few bars remind you why you loved it when you first heard it and maybe even where you were at the time you fell in love with the melody.  For me, music is like the smell of freshly-baked bread. One whiff of it and it takes me directly to a specific moment in my life when I first smelled bread out of the oven. One minute you're focused on something in front of you and the next, you've built an entire memory off the smell out of the oven

For me it's bread, maybe yours is ground coffee or horse manure. Whatever.  It's that thing that tickled your senses, that hung in the ether at that moment when you were having one of those life-changing experiences. Nobody forgets that stuff.  Maybe we think we do,  but then that something in your nose or that sound or taste -- whoosh, it all come back like it was yesterday.

It's a good thing to remember, how your senses can take your mind by the hand and lead you along a twisty trail of memories and moments that are so real you could, well, you could smell and taste and see and hear them. I  rely on senses when I write all the time. Scenes have people in them and things but I always try to ask myself what does it feel like, what's on the nose, what sounds, sights ... it's all good fodder for selling a character's experience. And it's often the best way to the heart of what you're writing about. Put your audience in the moment, with your character, seeing and feeling everything he does.

I'm not saying it's easy but the only place to start is to make sure you're using all your senses. Take note of your own world and keep it someplace safe. You never know when you'll need it. Speaking of, excuse me while I close up shop for the day. There's something in the air. I can feel it.

Took this shot of my two pugs this morning with my K100 D and edited it slightly in Photoshop. That's the old man, Louie on the left and little devil Chamuco on the right. My favorite subjects.