A first draft is all about the big picture. Who are these people? What happens to them? Why should I care? If done right, it paints a sweeping picture of the story. Draft two adds more layers to the story and makes it come alive. And to do that, we need details. Last October, I decided to cheer myself up by dedicating a week to noticing the beauty around me by photographing one beautiful thing every day. An interesting finding from this project was that it isn't usually the huge, expansive views that make me smile. It's the little things. A plant growing bravely out of a depression in a rock. The sudden flicker of a lizard running across the trail . Evidence that people have been in this land, living and loving, long before most of the people I've read about in history books were born.