Centum Fabulis
Latin: a hundred stories or fables
[at least according to google translate]
Inspiration is a funny thing. Sometimes it is a newspaper headline. Sometimes it is a scrap of conversation carried on the breeze. It can be the name of a filter in a camera app for an iPad.
(c) Trey Ratcliff
Tray Ratcliff [http://www.stuckincustoms.com] is an amazing photographer, If you could turn a fable into a documentary, Trey's pictures would be the stills from the set. Trey refers to himself as "old-school gentleman explorer" and he returns with photos from far-off lands that many will strive to find and wander in vain.
Speaking of fables, once upon a time, Trey had an app for the iPad called "100 Cameras in 1". The cameras were essentially different filters which added color effects, light leaks/flair, and texture effects. The iPad app has disappeared (though an iPhone remains), lost in the fog of war, the battlefield now the domain of Instagram and Snapchat.
What set this app apart when I first encountered the app years ago wasn't the filters themselves, but rather the evocative titles of the filters. The titles read as phrases that could have been lifted from stories, poems, songs. For example, the first filter is titled "a child's shoes, swinging from the chair". I was immediately captured by these titles. An idea formed. What if I wrote the stories these filter titles were lifted from? 100 filters = 100 stories.
I have embarked on this journey many times, getting a story or two in, before the walls of real life collapsed (read: my lack of discipline) down upon my best intentions. So much time has passed, that the app (at least the iPad version) has passed with it. Though is execution had died, the idea remained on life support in the back of my head, the framework not wanting to go gently into the night.
I have picked up the habit of taking writer's walks. I picked this up from listening to author Andrew Mayne (buy his books) who discussed the idea of dictating notes and even prose into a voice recorder while going for walks. It was during one of these walks, thinking about another story, that I was interrupted by the idea of the 100 stories. I started talking through the idea again and I kept repeating the number 100. Then the new project collapsed into its final form
The plan: 100 Days, 100 Stories, 100 Words, 100 Pictures
My failure point for previous attempts was the wide open nature of the plan. I had no constraints but deadlines and a line of text as inspiration. I wanted to publish 1 - 2 stories per month, a first giving myself one month to write the stories but with the long term goal of producing 1 story every two weeks. Being an English teacher, a father of four kids (three when I first started the project), and being incredibly lazy and easily distracted, brought the project to its knees. I wanted to write more than my current circumstances was comfortable signing off on (the first story was approx 3,500 words). What was needed was constraint, fences to keep the chaos of life at bay.
The plan is take 100 days to write 100 stories, using exactly 100 words, matched with 100 pictures. The idea for 100 words came from the idea of postcard fiction (resulting from a challenge given to Issac Asimov to write a story that would fit on a postcard) and originally, the pictures would use the filter with the title that was in the story. The problem, as mentioned above, is that only a free iPhone version of the app remains on the iTunes store. Not all the filters are included in the free version and you apparently can't but the full version to unlock the remaining filters. Also, to be honest, I am a fan of all the filters. If the filter is available and I like it, I will use it on the photo. If not, I won't.
After reading this post, you will be concerned that I will not be able to keep to the 100 word limit. This is a valid concern. Let's see what happens.
[djc].