sara's word blog

Razor clams

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to photograph a razor clam dig. These are really big in Washington state, and I only learned about them when I moved here a little more than a year ago.

People here take their razor clams seriously. They dig with special shovels, they use clam guns, and in Ocean Shores, they even host an annual razor clam festival, which got started last year.

The uber-professional journalist that I am, however, I went out on the beach with an only half-charged battery in my camera and began to shoot about 40 minutes before the sun set. I wanted that classic, clam digger against a radiant Pacific Ocean sunset shot, but before the sun even approached the horizon, my camera died.

This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, though, because when I got home I saw that the other paper in town (who owns us, business-wise, but we compete with, news-wise) ran a sunset clam digger photo on their front page. So I feel pretty good about my pre-sunset shots. I’ll post one here. 

Sweet apple pie.

I know it seems really random, since this is my word blog, but it does tie in: I am a writer, and as an aspiring magazine writer (aspiring, beginning, whatever) I subscribe to a lot of magazines.

Mostly it’s magazines I would like to write for: Budget Travel, Conde Nast Traveler, Travel & Leisure, Coastal Living, Seattle, Sunset etc. But I also subscribe to food magazines. This is for several reasons. First of all, I’d love to do a little food writing. Second, many of them feature travel stories in their pages and so it kind of becomes a hybrid travel-food writing mix. And third, because I love the pictures.

There’s something about food photographs in glossy magazine spreads that’s so sensual and makes you want to eat it right off the page.

Now the other connection is that I am also a beginning photographer. It’s funny to me that I’m a beginning photographer who is also, technically, a professional photographer. When I started at the newspaper, I was positively terrible. I mean total crap. But since I have taken a class, and I’m feeling like I’ve become, maybe, a mediocre photographer now.

So I’m going to start taking some food photographs, I’ve decided. Because it looks fun, and yummy. And since I’m a newlywed, my husband and I have been cooking almost every night with our shiny new pots, pans and knives, so there should be lots of opportunities for that kind of thing.

The sweet apple pie picture was also taken by my husband, Eric (who’s so new as a husband that it’s weird to write the word ‘husband’) long before we were married or even engaged. I was baking him an apple pie for his birthday.

So if they come out alright, maybe I’ll post them here. We’ll see. 

Chapter One?

Here is a quick piece of something I’ve been working on. It’s eventually working its way into the shape of a memoir — albeit, a very different one than Gilbert’s “eat pray love.” It’s about my first year on the job, running a small newspaper on the Washington coast.

Blue Tongue

Today, I went to a management meeting. With a blue tongue.
It was a management meeting about our newspaper’s Web site, and it made me want to barf. The guy who manages the Web site sat back in his chair while he explained ad placement on a Web site. These advertisers paid more because their ad was placed on every page. Those advertisers got more click-thrus because they were located in the Real Estate section of the site.
While he talked, I found it increasingly difficult to look at the projected image on the wall. The ads, blocky and stacked in a cacophonous way, made my head spin. Flashing pictures of apples and pumpkins on a local grocer’s ad made me cringe.
The rest of the managers — other weekly editors, managing editor, IT manager and the publisher, perched at the head of the table and croaking his way through a cold, all ate it up.
“Wow, this stuff is really incredible,” John said, rocking back in his chair. “Isn’t it amazing how far the Internet has come?”
I felt the usual boredom of the generation gap looming closer, and so I reached into my purse and popped a blue raspberry Jolly Rancher into my mouth. Thus, the blue tongue.
John suddenly turned to me.
“Sara, what do you think of our Web site? Does it need an overhaul?”
“Yes.”
“What don’t you like about the site now?” he asked, and everyone looked on. I thought about being tactful, but decided I was probably the only hope they had of hearing what a young person thought.
“It makes me cringe,” I said.
Everyone sat silent for a moment, looking at the Web site up on the wall in the darkened conference room.
“It makes you cringe?” he asked.
I then started to explain that if they really wanted to market this thing to anyone, it had to be sleek and cool and really easy to navigate.
“Congratulations, Sara,” John said to me mid-sentence. “You just got yourself elected to the group that’s going to work on this redesign.”
At least I sounded credible, I thought to myself. It didn’t appear to me that anyone had spotted the blue tongue and taken my advice as adolescent — although let’s be honest, a little adolescent opinion is what they could really use right now.

eat pray love

Finally finished “eat pray love,” by Elizabeth Gilbert. It was a really great book.

 Basically, this woman (Elizabeth Gilbert herself; this book is a memoir) goes through this really terrible divorce and decides that what she needs is to take a year off, travel and get her life back in order. So she spends a year traveling to the three Is: Italy, India and Indonesia.

It reminded me a lot of “Under the Tuscan Sun.” This terribly hurt woman has become someone she doesn’t like, and she wants to find herself again. And find herself she does: She eats like a horse in Italy (who wouldn’t?), lives in an Ashram in India and studies with a medicine man in Bali during the course of her journey.

This book is really popular right now, so I’m sure no one needs a recommendation from me, but this is one of those books that’s going to stick in my head for awhile. Especially my favorite scene, where Elizabeth and her Swedish friend trek from Rome to Naples just to eat some pizza - and once they’re eating this famous, fabulous pizza, she looks across the table at her friend who is almost in tears, she’s so happy. They each eat two pizzas. Hysteria over pizza. My kind of scene.

Check it out, it’s a good read and a good journey to follow along on.

On a related note, if any publishers out there would like to pay me to travel for a year and write a book, please let me know immediately. 

A sad state of affairs

Aberdeen, Washington is my new hometown.

I have been living here for more than a year now, and recently I’ve been having some conversations about this town and how sad-looking it is. In addition to that, there is no good place to go shopping, to eat out (well, there are two, but how long can that last you?) and no place cool to hang out. The bars are all sort of sleazy, and there’s just not a lot to do if you’re in your 20s and looking to have fun with your friends.

We’ve met some really cool people in the year I’ve been here. (Actually, most of them are high school friends of my fiance). But there are some people with some amazing vision for this town.

One of the sad things they keep doing is knocking down old buildings. I know some of them need to be knocked down — a building needs to be safe, and so many of them have been sitting in disrepair for so long, that it would be really tough to rescue them now. But I think the ones that can be saved should be saved.

Aberdeen could be right on the verge of a renaissance. It could redefine itself as a cute touristy town, instead of the logging town it was during its more prosperous days. There could be cool places to live (historic condo conversions, anyone?) and cool places to eat and hang out. That would be an Aberdeen I would want to live in.

As we speak, negotiations continue between Chester Trabucco and a Bellevue investor (Aberdeen native) to move ahead on the Morck Hotel project. Meanwhile, the investor has gone ahead and purchased the D&R Theater and is starting to fix that up. He’s also made public a desire to purchase two of the more renowned buildings in town (the Elks Building on Broadway and the Becker building) and convert them both to condos. 

The cool thing about some of these old buildings is that there are a few for sale, and you can’t get this kind of square footage for this price anywhere else in the country, I’m pretty sure. It’s small town prices, and it’s a bit of a testament to how desperate the town is getting for someone to come in and give it a bit of a makeover. 

Here’s to a group of young people, making something happen in a town that desperately needs it. 

See Jane Write

See Jane Write: A Girl’s Guide to writing Chick Lit. Sounded like a good idea. And maybe it was, actually.

I sat down to read this book - and I love this kind of book because it’s very hands-on, the kind of book you can read in one hand and have a pen and paper in the other, taking notes and scrawling brilliant ideas.

The problem was, none of the ideas coming out of my head were very brilliant. They basically break down Chick Lit into what it usually is, which, without much more imagination, is extremely boring.

 ”Girl wants something. Girl pursues what she wants, only to find out it’s the last thing she needs. In the end, girl finds what she needs.”

So I started scrawling down some ideas. I can do this, I thought. I love to tell stories. I love to hear stories. I am a girl. I have seen girls in myriad situations and I think I have a handle on the whole creativity thing. But the more I brainstorm, the more my ideas all look the same. Basically, she’s me. Except just a little bit different. Like, maybe her boyfriend broke up with her (which nauseated me, because even though I thought giving chick lit a try would be sort of fun, I really didn’t want to write a book about how men complete your life.)

I’m not saying that men can’t complete your life. But you have to have your own free-standing life first, your own identity, and only then can you bring a man into the situation.

So I have about 40 pieces of legal paper scattered all around my apartment now, with these trite ideas scrawled on them. You’re supposed to write about a world you know, and could recreate, so I have a list that reads: Journalism. College newspaper. Private school. Theater. Camp.

I think the main problem is that when I want to write fiction, I usually end up coming up with an idea that is a very, very thinly veiled version of me, going through a problem I went through oh, about 5 minutes ago. And I don’t want my own life to read like a chick lit novel.

The book, however, is great. It offers a lot of solid writing advice that can be a reminder to anyone who writes for a living or a solid basis for future projects for the beginning writer. Besides, it’s pretty and it’s printed on thick paper. All in all, I’m glad I bought it.

So I’ll be over here in the corner, trying to think up an original idea.