Shooters Shoot

In what now seems like a previous lifetime, may eons ago, I took a creative writing class.  As a roomful of eager young scribes settled into their desks on the first day of class, our professor, Kevin Smith walked between the rows and handed each of us a blank recipe card about the size of a postcard.


He turned to the chalkboard and scribbled on it.  Two words, all in uppercase.  WRITERS WRITE.


Smith was an Australian, with a full red beard just beginning to be tinged with grey, and a splendidly rumpled sports jacket smudged with chalk dust. His voice was a deep, rich, rolling, wonderfully accented baritone, "I want you all to write down those two words on the card I just gave you and then I want you to put in a place where you can see it at often as possible.  Tack it to the wall. Writers write.  If you learn nothing else in this class, learn that.  Writers write."


I thought for sure Smith was joking and I was about to laugh out loud at his sense of humor, and then I noticed everyone else in the class was already furiously scribbling away on their blank card.  Rolling my eyes, I did the same thing.  But he was right.  And it really was the single best piece of advice I took from Creative Writing 101.  It took me the better part of a decade to realize the profound truth in those two words but eventually they stuck.  


Thirty years on, I have lost track of the number of times I have repeated that mantra, 'Writers Write'.  When someone tells me they want to be a writer, it's generally the first bit of advice I give.  "Write!  Writers write."  Only after you have written, and written and then written some more do you need to be concerned about form and style and voice.


And over time I learned that Smith's writing mantra was widely applicable to just about every learned skill in life.  If you want to be good at something, really good at it that is and not just passably proficient, you have to do it a lot.  Hundreds and hundreds of times until it adds up to thousands of times, which becomes ten of thousands of times.  And then, at that point, someone may notice and someone may even suggest that you are an artist in your chosen field of repetition.  Writers write.  Painters paint.  Runners run.  You are only good at something until you have done it to the point where it has become second nature to you.  Until you can do it in your sleep.


Of course just about the only way you can do something over and over and over again until you become unconsciously skilled at it and attain a level of excellence without losing your sanity or your touch on reality, is to be madly in love with what you are doing in the first place.  Passion, dedication, obsession, call it what you will, you probably need it in spades to become masterful in the calling of your choosing.


So, bitten as I am by my latest passion, photography, it only seems right to do what I always do and give full rein to my obsession.  How do I become a good photographer, a better photographer?  Take lots of photos.  Every day.  If writers write, then shooters shoot.  I think I'm going to write that down.


'Shooters Shoot'


My inaugural shot was taken overlooking English Bay in the direction of Lighthouse Park.  It rained all day, this January 1 and I tucked my trusty Nikon D3s under my jacket.  The camera probably has much better weather-sealing than I do.  It was around five in the afternoon and the ships in the harbor were just beginning to turn on their anchor lights.  I love the water-colors of the late painter, Tony Onley, and that is what the sky looked like to me, a water color of blues and grays.  But there is something warm and comforting looking about the glow of the ship's lights across the harbor waters.


- Vince Hemingson -