Michael Janairo

Blog

  • Now up at the Albany International Airport

    airport-dz
    Flight Plans, Deborah Zlotsky, Digital print on adhesive-backed vinyl, 2019

    The next time you are at the Albany International Airport and checking in for a flight, look to your right to see this new large-scale work.

    According to the Art and Culture Program at the Albany Airport:

    The geometric patterns in this composition are based upon paper airplanes folded by employees throughout Albany International Airport who were invited to contribute to this project. After collecting the planes, the artist unfolded them and then traced their creases into this fifteen-part sequence. The white lines on varying shades of blue ground echo the contrails of jets as they cross the sky, or blueprint renderings for simple, elegant flying machines

    A public reception for the current exhibition, Patterns of Engagement, will be Friday, Jan. 17, at 5:30pm, featuring work by the artists Tasha Depp, Adam Frelin, Rich Garrison, Jack Magai, Laini Nemett, Chris St. Cyr, Chris Victor, and Deborah Zlotsky.

     

     

  • ‘The War Prayer’ by Mark Twain

    It seemed like a good idea to bring your attention to this piece of writing that Mark Twain wrote in response to the U.S. military intervention against the freedom fighters of the Philippines. It wasn’t published until long after he died. Now in the public domain, “The War Prayer” continues to resonate more than a hundred years after it was written. Also included below is a 2007 dramatization.  

    (more…)

  • Happy New Year

    Just finished my first winter run outdoors in forever.

    Hope you have a great 2020!

  • Snow day!

    Should I even try to go outside today?

  • A proud ugly-sweater wearer

    The little brother rockin the holiday sweater.

    Happy Thanksgiving

  • NaNoWriMo Day 27: Crossing the 50,000-word mark

    Screen Shot 2019-11-27 at 10.32.53 PM

    So I hit 50,161 words a few minutes ago. Despite what the certificate above suggests, I know the novel isn’t done. In fact, I just stopped in the middle of a scene because it is getting late. I’ve been busy writing the past few weeks, so haven’t been keeping up with blogging about the writing. But this feels good.

    Still, I think I have about another 30,000 words to go until this draft is done, so maybe December will be National Novel Draft Completion Month, and then next few months after that will be all about the revision.

    Thanks for reading along!

  • NaNoWriMo Day 11

    img_1426Words for the day: 1,441

    Total words: 19,863

    Not much to say. I may have crossed a threshold, and figured something out.

    Now saving my words for the NaNoWriMo.

  • NaNoWriMo Days 7–10

    photo of person walking near orange leafed trees
    Photo by KIM DAE JEUNG on Pexels.com

    Words for Day 7: Zero

    Words for Day 8: 1,573

    Words for Day 9: 3,542

    Words for Day 10: 4,595

    Total words: 18,422

    Late fall deep freeze crept in over the last few days, and I ran out of steam (or was it time) for any writing on Day 7. So it was an accidental day off; however, a little brain rest can always be helpful.

    I spent some of my writing time over the last few days doing something I’m not sure I was supposed to be doing during NaNoWriMo, considering one of the mantras of the month is to write, write, write, always moving forward to get more words down. I went back and did a little editing, adding and expanding on earlier sections.

    Yes, there definitely was a net gain, but I did have to delete some words. It felt very much not in the spirit of the month when, after about an hour of writing and getting down a few hundred (maybe almost 1,000) words, I removed some of the no longer relevant passages and found myself suddenly at a net zero.

    Words, they come and go. Oh, well.

     

  • NaNoWriMo Day 6

    I’m using this image, which I found searching for the word “breathe,” which I mean in a positive way, though this could be verging on “drown.” Ambiguity.
    Photo by Engin Akyurt on Pexels.com

    Words for the day: 1,477

    Total words: 8,712

    Still behind the NaNo schedule, but I’m happy with the day’s results. One of the things that I reminded myself to do tonight is give a scene a chance to breathe. So I went back a few paragraphs from where I had left off last night, and realized that I needed to break up a character’s paragraph-long quote. That allowed that character to test and measure other characters’ reactions to what she was saying, as well as allowing other characters to say things — thus slightly changing the direction of the conversation as I had written it yesterday (characters! with their own thoughts!).

    Perhaps most importantly, it allowed me the space to insert moments in which my main character could witness, think, and evaluate things. This, I think, will deepen a reader’s understanding and empathy for the main character, and it allowed a quick flashback for some background information that deepens the history of the main character.

    So in some ways, I ended my writing session by getting back to where I had left off the night before, but I put down a lot of important words that lets the story breathe and the characters express their lives in new ways.

    A good writing session.