Fantasizing Fotos Fridays

Krystine Kercher and a couple other Lost Genre Guild authors set up a LGG Pinterest board this past February. I knew virtually nothing about Pinterest back then--not even how to spell it! (I think it was MikeD who corrected me in an email.)  Being a loyal LGG member & author-buddy, I promised to post material on "the board". Whatever that was.

It took a couple of days for the board to go up and for Krystine to issue invitations. I decided to check out this "Pinterest Thingie" while I waited.
Big. Mistake.

In my opinion, every human being has at least one vulnerability in our personalities. There's the "fast women/fast cars", "fashionistas", or "15 Minutes of Fame" seekers". Then there's the "auto-fantasizer" who sees a picture or looks through a shop window at people talking and can't resist theorizing about what they're discussing. Maybe there's nothing going on, but that hardly matters! Give us a few minutes, and there will be!

I inherited this a/f/f/l/i/c/t/i/o/n/,  c/o/m/p/u/l/s/i/v/e t/r/a/i/t/  hobby directly from my maternal grandmother. She loved to "people-watch" whether from a boardwalk bench or as a passenger studying the people in surrounding cars. You daren't leave her alone with her own thoughts for a minute! Given no time at all, grandmom would share their background, motivations, place of origin & destination with you. Her theories were invariably plausible because she took time to observe details and weave them into the scenarios she shared with us.

Back to Pinterest--which insists you register if you want to play. Krystine hadn't mentioned whether we needed to be a member in order to access the LGG board. I chose not to wait to find out. So... back to
Big Mistake.

You remember the line from "2001: a Space Odyssey"? "It's full of stars!"
Pinterest is full of pictures, most of them photographs but with enough art to balance the mix.

I was hooked. Indeed, I was hooked to the point that I had created two boards of my own before my first pin on the Lost Genre Guild's board.  I have 5, 7, 9 boards now. My first two were "Oceans: Real and Imaginary" and "Ima Writerly Writer Who Writes".

And so finally to the point of this blog entry, "Fantasizing Fotos Fridays" and God willing all of its future progeny.

I introduced the "Ima Writerly Writer Who Writes" board like this:

"People say they’re not creative so they can’t write or do art. Nonsense! I bet you daydream? Anyone who daydreams has an imagination. As a fantasy author, I use my creativity to write stories. I love books! But I’m fascinated by photos & paintings. Ambiguous pix stimulate our imaginations. We wonder, What’s she thinking? or Why would anyone make that? or Why does that tree attract me/ make me feel uneasy? When we make up answers, that’s our imaginations making up stories."

I've added 159 pins--pictures with brief comments--to the IWWWW board over the last five months. Their subjects vary but form what I believe is a cohesive collection: books, quotations from respected authors, tips on writing, what I call "pep talk" quotations, tips on marketing and finally photographs or artwork gifted with a fascinating ambiguity. When I p/o/s/t/e/d/  pinned one of these pictures to the IWWWW board, I would wonder aloud what so'n'so was or maybe spin a theory about what was happening.

Pinterest doesn't allow pinners to make long comments. While anyone viewing someone else's pin can comment on it. doing so is very rare. I've found this a little frustrating.

So--as you've doubtless guessed by now--I intend to post a picture here every Friday with the short commentary that Pinterest permitted. I hope you will enjoy looking at the pictures and that you'll take a couple of minutes to offer your reactions of whatever kind. No two people will imagine the same thing. That would be way weird!

My comments will appear directly after the picture to make downloading/uploading easier. I hope you will --ignore- what I've written until you've studied the picture to your own satisfaction. I hope you offer your thoughts in the comments!

Have fun!