hameBlog

Catching up.

2010-09-09T17:07:00.001+01:00

Before I even brushed my teeth this morning, I made this book. It was hard (thick waxed linen thread, little holes, frail cardboard), it's a bit of a mess, and it doesn't really work as a book, but I still think it's neat:

I'm in high-gear 'cause Craig's away this week (I can work in my studio constantly without feeling guilty), and I've got a book fair at the end of the month. I want all sorts of new and cool things to show there.

And I'm about to start writing another novel, so last night I made a project book for it:

I also find that my brain, which has been hungering for input and ideas the last several months, like a locomotive trying to OD on coal, is starting to turn inward and be less inclined to start anything new that will take away my time.

There's a book on my night-shelf, though, that I'm wavering over: Its descriptions are beautifully evocative, but each story seems to end up being about a couple who have slowly grown to loathe each other. I get very, very bored of this as a literary theme. This is only "realism" if you have a really crappy worldview.

There are so many social media outlets for self-expression these days that it's difficult to know whether one needs to keep each of them updated with all the same news at the same time. I'm forever flip-flopping about whether my personal life belongs on this blog, but I would be remiss if I didn't at least mention here that I've proposed to my beloved!

The details are all falling together, and the gist is that it's going to be a very small event with my family in Prince Edward Island at Christmas, then we're going to do something in Scotland with his family.

We've booked a space, I've ordered a kilt, and we've booked the flights, so it's happening, and I couldn't be happier.

No baggage on this trip

2010-08-12T14:01:00.000+01:00

I'm in Toronto and having a great, relaxed time. I'm eating in great local restaurants, seeing big dumb summer movies with friends (cinemas! we don't have those in Wick), and being totally, utterly, absolutely in love with the people I work with.

It's great to work directly with the team members at my client's office, and to quickly turn around jobs by collaborating right there and then in the moment. I like and respect these people so much, and am grateful for the blessing of having this work and these relationships.

I will not be sliding down any inflatable escape-chutes any time soon.

The only thing missing is my darling. It's an ache being apart from him, but I know that space and time apart are healthy.

Last night I wrote this to him, which sums up how I'm feeling:

Even though I'm far away from you, my heart is light because of you, brimming with joy. I feel enormous, easy love for the friends I see, and instead of wary urban suspicion, I regard the people on the street with affection for their humanity.

I see handsome people on bikes or walking past and simply smile like I would at a funny advert. I remember all the hot chases, conquests, and losses, and I simply feel free from the strivingness of all that. And from the sadness; joyfully free from the heavy-hearted, sooty-veined sadness. I am not saved, but I am delivered.

Thank you. I miss you. I love you.

Location:Markham St,Toronto,Canada

Parenting, patterning.

2010-08-12T13:51:00.000+01:00

When I was little, my father was a parole officer; he taught me how to live in the freedom of adult life.

When I was little, my mother was a secretary; she taught me how to get the details right.

My own press.

2010-08-04T20:22:00.001+01:00

When my folks were here, Dad bought me a hacksaw.

It's a corollary of that rule that you never mention liking something when you're visiting your parents, or they'll end up giving it to you; when they visit, they buy you things they think you need.

At the time I thought, "What the heck would I need a hacksaw for?" Now I know, and I'm grateful I had it, because over the past two days I've been able to make my own perfect-binding press.

I've owned two other presses, both of which were good in their own right, but each had little quirks that made me have to work differently to the way I wanted to.

The other morning, while the fella and I were at a youth hostel in Tongue (yeah, it's a place called "Tongue" — Tonga in Gaelic, if that's less silly), I woke up with the plans for a press in my mind. It hadn't ever occurred to me before to make my own, but in that moment it made absolute sense that everything about my process should be DIY.

The other thought was that I could offer these to "DIY Book" listeners, and it would be considerably cheaper than the other two presses in both price and shipping charges. Figuring out this one and cutting all the bits with the hacksaw and a Dremel tool was a lot of work, so I'm not sure if that's a viable plan. Maybe I can get better and faster at doing it, or maybe I should outsource it to someone who's a good woodworker.

At any rate, I'm really pleased with the end result. It's a little bit cute, it's a little bit ugly, and it's exactly what I want!

Own space.

2010-07-31T14:29:00.001+01:00

My fan and internet friend Danny Bloom sent me a link to an interview he did about his latest passion: the difference between on-screen reading and reading from books.

Someone who works in technology wrote him and said he was fighting a losing battle, that paper is dead (though Danny isn't saying we shouldn't read on-screen, he's just calling for someone, somewhere to give a proper scientific look and see if this affects our brains differently and whether we're okay with this shift in cognition). Here's what I wrote to Danny:

My partner watched An Inconvenient Truth last night. In it, Gore quotes someone as saying something along the lines of "It's difficult to get a man to see sense when his income depends on him not seeing it."

I've got a stack of e-books in my valise, printed out as real books, because I read real books differently — as more valuable, notable, lasting, and memorable than electronic information. Not to mention all those other factors like being able to feel your progress through the work and know how much is remaining, and it being so much easier on the eyes, and doing different things in the brain as you said in the article.
Sometimes I do feel a pang of guilt when I realise that the paper I'm using — even the recycled paper — had to come from somewhere, and putting the trimmings in the recycling doesn't mean they magically turn into new paper with zero energy cost... But still... Books are nice. As that other article sent me said so beautifully, books are a perfect technology. Computer devices are still far from perfect.
I finished making these two books last night. What piece of electronic gear — even the iPad — will ever feel the same as opening a fresh new book? The iPad is a space already filled with demands, tentacles pulling you away to other people's ideas and commercial intentions for you, whereas a blank book is your own, private, infinite imaginal space.

The Twitch Response

2010-07-28T09:32:00.001+01:00

The last few days, I've been finding that the constant twitch-muscle-type effect of constant information flow is making my brain feel restless, worried, and unable to focus on all the things I'm excited about working on.

This morning, the fella's alarm went off, making its loveable sound like someone pressing a Dremel tool to my ear, and my brain was off to the races. Rather than rolling over and checking who said what on Twitter or whether I had any e-mails, I started thinking about a last-minute webinar invitation I had to write for my client today. All kinds of ideas tumbled out like a box of Slinkies down the stairs, and I had to get up.

So here it is, 9:23AM, and I've already done my work for the day. There's more — there's always more — but that was the piece I had to write. And there's a boatload of other things I want to work on, learn, or read, so I'm tempted to keep 'net access off today.

Oh, the baby gulls who live on the chimney across the street can fly! I was wondering if they could yet, because they're not little grey fluffballs anymore; they're full-sized gulls, just mottled and mud-puddle coloured.

I also wondered if once they'd flown the nest if they would go back there — if birds retain a "home" — or if they'd go off somewhere else. For now, it looks like the neighbour's chimney-pot is still home.

The gulls in Wick are a gang that rules the rooftops. When they see things happening down below, they all get excited at once, and that excitement is translated into screeches. I bet if I live here for a while those sounds will start to make sense. They don't have a lot of 'em, and they're all pretty noticeable!

Up and down again.

2010-07-27T11:15:00.001+01:00

I didn't really sleep the night before we were to go up Ben Nevis. By the time Craig and I got to bed, there were only about three hours available to sleep; in the afternoon, I went to the pub to plough through some work I needed to focus on, and, among the things I bought to pay for my long stay there were two coffees. So when it was time to sleep, I lay there the whole time with wild dreams going through my head — every real or imagined place in my life played out there, it seemed — but even though I was dreaming, my brain would just not give up the ghost, you might say.

Eventually, the alarm went off. We packed up all our stuff and went out into the square, where the neighbours were walking a relay around the park through the night. Someone had set up a marquee tent, bunting hung back and forth across the square, and smoke tumbled from a small drum with a fire in it. Our neighbour Lorna, the powerhouse organiser behind this whole event, met us in flannel pyjamas, housecoat, and curlers with an unlit cigarette hanging from her mouth — this was her costume, and it wasn't too different from her husband David's! She offered us cullen skink, but I'd just had cereal, because it seemed right to treat this as the start of the day rather than the middle of the night.

We met James and Ian, the other two neighbours who were making the climb with us, piled into Ian's car, and drove off into the middle of the night. My usual 'carcolepsy' kicked in, and I slept for most of the four-hour drive.

The sky was beginning to lighten as we arrived, and Nevis loomed overhead. We parked at the visitors' centre and loaded ourselves up. The morning was cool, so I bundled up in every layer I'd brought.

Pretty soon, I'd taken most of it off again, because the first part of the climb was a gruelling, seemingly endless walk up a trail that felt more like an inclined riverbed. I'd brought enough snacks to last the whole day, thinking that would make life easier, but at this point I had that cold, clammy, almost-nauseous feeling that comes with suddenly having a lot of exercise of a sort you're not accustomed to. Craig and I stopped for a drink and a rest, not speaking it but sharing a doubt that we could keep this up all day. But there was no way we would stop, so we kept on.

Lorna and David had given us walking sticks, which I'd taken along even though I'd always thought they were a silly affectation. Now I understood how valuable they were! What a help it was, being able to use them to push myself up a rock with my arms rather than just having to do all the lifting with my legs.

Then the path suddenly got smooth and even, and the scenery opened up, too. We walked around a valley and looked out in awe over the Great Glen.

As difficult as this was, I was having fun — partly because I was determined to, and partly because the whole thing was, at this point, my choice to do. I had all these notions of what the climb would mean, and even made these little cards to remind me of the metaphoric stuff it was supposed to be about:

...But the day turned out to be just about what it was about, doing a thing and seeing some stuff. And that was plenty.

We continued on and reached a third section of the trail — which wasn't simply a natural trail, but one that had been gritted and gravelled and paved with huge rocks. The work involved in that beggared belief, and I was grateful, yet I'm not really sure it made the climb easier. In this third bit, the path turned into a kind of huge, uneven stone staircase, like climbing the stairs of a Mayan ruin. It went on and on, providing better and better views of the hills and valleys around us, like a mossy crown with water in the middle.

But lifting my head was only an occasional indulgence, because every footstep had to be placed just right.

The weather was forecast to be wet and miserable all day, but thankfully that was wrong. (Since moving to the Highlands, I've come to expect that the weather forecast will always be wrong — besides which, it changes so often that describing a whole day as having one "weather" is wildly inadequate.)

Still, the higher we got, the colder it grew, and we had to put on more layers. As we reached the top, the ground turned to gravel, which made for another period of gruelling progress, as the shifting ground stole away most of our walking effort.

We switched back again and again on the way up (occasionally passed by mad army-folk who ran or walked briskly down with little gear, suggesting that they'd somehow ascended in the dark; I still don't understand how that could be possible). Then cloud settled around us and we seemed to be in a grey netherworld. Piled-up cones of large rocks — cairns — added to the feeling that we'd entered a Celtic or Norse limbo.

I'd told myself beforehand that I wouldn't bother with "Are we there yet?"-type thoughts, but would just take the climb moment by moment. I knew the cairns marked the top, but had been warned that the top isn't where you think it is, it's further. So, with my feet sliding on the gravel, I kept digging my poles in and walking until we all gathered at a plaque on a small plinth. But even that turned out to not be the official geographic top — that was slightly further along. So we clambered onto that and had our picture taken by some of the others who'd arrived.

By this point, more and more people were appearing at the top, many of them dressed completely inadequately for the frigid weather up there. Groups of these young people showed up, along with the odd weathered and fit sole climber wearing fitness gear, who promptly turned around and ran back off once they'd arrived.

We sat in the rubble-ruins of one of the buildings from the old observation post that was once at the peak, and we ransacked our rucksacks, eating sandwiches and granola bars and fruit, guzzling water and energy drinks.

Then we made our way back down. It was no easier, though we did it faster (3:15 up, 2:50 down). Again, the poles we indispensable, helping us gain surer footing and keep us from destroying our knees and shins.

The closer we got to the bottom, the more people were on their way up — which made for some awkward passing places, and also made us look at each other in disbelief at some of the outfits people had on for the climb, such as the couple who looked like young Italian models in their tight jeans, or the middle-aged couple in T-shirts and shorts who were both as round as teapots, the families with young children and dogs (the dogs were having no problem, though I wondered how the Jack Russell with the bad leg doing step, step, step, hop was going to make it up the giant Mayan stairs), and older couples in city clothes, her with her purse like they were just going out shopping. I wonder how many of those people actually made it to the top.

By the time I was back on level ground, I was knackered. As I teetered forward on two sticks, my legs were no longer able to move up and down, no matter how much I tried to will them forward. I had new sympathy for what it must be like for my dad when his Parkinson's medication wears off.

We got back to the car, patched up our blisters and changed our damp clothing, then, in proper Scottish fashion, drove to the nearest pub.

On the way home, the car hit a boulder that had rolled out of a stone wall onto the road, which bounced one side of the car into the air, then we landed and bounced off the wall, decimating the wing-mirror, scraping the side of the car, and splitting and bending the front tyre. Thanks to Ian's handling of the car, we were fine. After a wait for Roadside Assistance, we were headed home, driven along the swerving, calamitously steep coastal roads at crazy speed by a foul-mouthed, racist, older English man who hinted at having a sketchy past.

Finally, we arrived back in Argyle Square, just in time to join the walking relay for their final lap. It was torture, forcing my legs forward, but we made it, and all finished the event together.

That evening was also the opening of the Wick Gala, and, as happens each year, decorated floats passed through the square. We weren't prepared, so one of the neighbours gave Craig and I a bag of 2-pence coppers to throw at the floats, which collected money for various projects around town (mostly the schools, it seemed).

Then we all retired to Lorna and David's lush back garden, where we sat in a circle on folding lawn-chairs, chatting, having drinks, then eating Indian take-away when it arrived. Craig and I felt really welcomed by the whole group, and soon Lorna was cooking up plans for us all to go camping together.

I can see when Craig is starting to fade, and I knew I was tired, so after a while we excused ourselves to go home. I'd been having to move my legs manually all evening, since I couldn't lift them, like some TV movie paraplegic, so getting out of my lawn-chair was a challenge. But oh, after a shower to clean off the sweat and grit, did it ever feel nice to slip into bed!

Not necessarily every mountain, but climb this one.

2010-07-22T17:20:00.001+01:00

Tomorrow night at 2AM, Craig and I set off with two of our neighbours to climb Ben Nevis as part of a neighbourhood park improvement fundraiser. Other neighbours will be doing a 24-hour relay walk around the park — in their pyjamas! That part was my idea... thank you, thank you. We, on the other hand, will be climbing a mountain.

I admit, when I first agreed to do the climb — and for a long time afterward — I was dreading it. A few people have told me it's a dawdle, that there's a tourist path that's well-trodden and perfectly manageable. I've also read, however, that if the weather isn't perfect, Ben Nevis is a crushingly difficult climb into the clouds where all climbers meet a certain doom. (Doom... DOOM!)

Except thousands of people do it every year. And some people even managed to take a piano up there. So it's probably fine.

The biggest obstacle I was anticipating wasn't actually the mountain, but me. I know when I have to do physical chores I don't want to, I can get really cranky. I don't want to climb this munro with my lover and two neighbours and be a complete prick the whole time, so I knew I had to shift where my head was at about this trek. I think I've done that.

First, there was the logistical matter of not having the right gear. Well, it would be stupid to do this climb that way, so I finally got some proper waterproof hiking boots, gloves, and a rucksack, and another neighbour loaned me his hiking jacket and gave us both some walking-sticks.

Then there's the matter of exerting ourselves all day, so I stocked up on lots of little treats and energy-stuff so we'll be able to snack like squirrels the whole way up. I know that will keep me happy.

But the big, big impasse was "Why the hell am I doing this, anyway?" My parents kindly insisted on giving me sponsorship money, but, aside from a weak little message on Twitter and Facebook, I haven't asked anyone for money because a) I don't know people here, other than the neighbours, and b) I hate asking people for money.

For one, I'm weary of constantly being asked to sponsor this event or that online. Somebody's always asking for something, and I don't particularly like being on the receiving end of it.

Second, at least most people's causes are a terribly sad disease. We want to fix up our park. It's a nice park. It's a historic park. But the first rule of copywriting is to step into your audience's shoes and ask, "What's in it for me?" I honestly can't answer what's in it for anyone else if my park gets fixed up.

And I'm fine with that. This is not something I'm terribly committed to getting better at. In my workshop days, whenever we resisted promoting their thing to everyone they'd ask, "Where else does this issue show up in your life?" I know I'm not great at charging for my stuff or promoting it (I'm in R&D on that), but at least in those cases I feel convinced that my books are good on the inside and out, and my copywriting clients think my work hits the bullseye pretty often. So the fundraising is not something I want to make an issue of.

I have to have something at stake, though. Just surviving this climb would be a sucky approach and make for a miserable day.

On the outside, it's a chance to get to know some of the neighbours, and to do something pretty different with Craig.

On the inside, though... What is it? What could it be? I sat down with my journal, put on some ambient music, and put the question to myself. Here's what I said (translated back from shorthand!):

I'm thinking about the climb of Ben Nevis we're making tomorrow. Before I was dreading it, doing it just to be polite. Now I actually want to go. I have the right equipment, but more than that, I am approaching the experience as one big metaphor. After all, mountains are the ultimate metaphor for goals and achievement. So what is my relationship to goals and achievement?
I haven't been setting big goals for a while and I think it's because deep down I think it's not actually possible to get what I want — even though I have a great life. I never became a famous actor. I didn't get lucky with my books. So I guess I've kinda stopped trying for the big stuff. [It's very uncomfortable even writing that, because these are the icky external motivations I look down at now, but perhaps it's good to admit that at the beginning those were the stars in my eyes.]
In his youth, Dan Sullivan [president of the company I copywrite for], did an Outward Bound climb of the Cairngorm Mountains in Scotland. One day, he reached a point when he couldn't go any further. His instructor went back to where he was sitting down.
"So this is where you stop, is it?" the instructor asked.
"What?" asked Dan.
"Well, everyone has a point where they stop. I guess this is yours."
Dan hated that thought, so he got up and kept going, and finished the climb.
So if the results I got don't look like traditional success, is this where I stop? Or, more to the point in my case, where I go instead of there?

So we'll see what the mountain says. But I'm excited now. I know there'll at least be good snacks!

Don't stop the elevator.

2010-07-20T09:37:00.001+01:00

My friend Lisa wrote a post this morning about coming up with an elevator speech — a short description you can share in the time it takes to move between floors in a lift — to describe her work as an artist and creativity coach.

That's funny: I'd just read another post that said we shouldn't use elevator speeches. I found the anti-elevator-speech article while hopscotching from a link in a tweet that was a retweet then following a link on a site... one of those WWILF ("What Was I Looking For?") episodes.

Okay, I have to admit that my first reaction was...

(My author photo sucks, so I shouldn't talk.)

Then I read the piece and took the point he was making: We should have genuine conversations with people, because nobody likes giving or hearing a canned litany.

Still, people do ask us creative folk "What do you do?" and it can be difficult to give an answer. Despite the advice to the contrary, I think it does help to find a concise and compelling way to talk about it that saves us trying to convey the entirety of the work or give an experience of it on the spot, which is pretty much impossible to do in those situations.

The question I get the most is "What kind of books do you write?" And the answer 99% of people are expecting is a genre category, because that's what the corporate marketplace has reduced literature to. The problem is, I don't write "horror" or "romance" or any other potted type of story.

I'm overhauling my whole approach to self-promotion right now, and in the meantime, to spare myself the agony, and to give people a taste of "Oh, a tiny handmade thing; this is possible?", I've created a little leave-behind catalogue and FAQ for my books:

The big challenge, I find, with most of the advice about marketing and promotion is that it's aimed at people who sell a product or service. So we're told: "What do you do? Who does it help, and how?", or, "What do you sell? How is it useful? In what situation?"

Of course, if your answer is "A dance" or "A novel", or "A painting", it's pretty difficult to quantify the magic of the received experience — particularly when only certain people will perceive and connect with that magic (get lost in your book, be moved by the dance, connect with the painting, &c).

Oscar Wilde said that art must be useless; if it's bent to a purpose, it's no longer art. Yet we artists live in a market-driven world and have to justify our place in it. I suppose this stops us from crawling completely into our own navels — though I think anyone who's worried about being too self-absorbed probably shouldn't be worrying. In fact, most of us could probably go further and be more daring.

I dunno. I'm still going to advise authors to come up with an elevator speech, because having one helps keep the book focused while we're writing it, and afterward helps potential readers find a starting place in understanding the book and whether it's for them.

The icky stuff (like promotion and marketing)

2010-07-16T09:53:00.001+01:00

I just replied to an e-mail from someone who follows DIY Book, and, I have to say, has really run with the idea. I'm touched, kinda proud, and am impressed with what he's making. (He's got a shop on Etsy.)

He asked me about promotion — an issue that's standing right in the middle of the road in front of me. After a wonderful visit with my folks, I'm trying to gather my energies and figure out what's next, and that all came out in my reply to him — which I'm sharing here, 'cause the letter finally gave me a chance to articulate this for myself:

------------------------------

Marketing is my great bugbear. Oh yeah, I can make the stuff available and present it well -- I'm happy about those skills. But communicating about it, having conversations in which I close the sale, doing successful promotion on the web — that's where I suck.

I'm actually in a space, though, where I'm going headlong into this stuff 'cause I want to beat it. No, not "beat", transform. There's no enemy out there or anyone holding me back; it's about 87% just stuff in my head that holds me back. I don't want to be gross, I don't want to pretend that my work is for everyone 'cause it's got some gay in it, and it's all imaginative and stuff, and they're not serious. (Just sent a tweet out asking people if they actually care about that.)

So I've bought an online course about "non-icky promotion" and another one about writing articles, and I'm really going into this question, trying to figure out what my approach is — and, on a deeper level, figure out exactly what I'm doing in writing fiction and being creative in the first place, what my intention is. (Though I suspect that it's because it's in my DNA, my constitution, so it's not like it's a choice.)

In the meantime, I created a tiny catalogue with order/contact information that I can leave with people when we have The Conversation ("Oh, what kind of books do you write?") That way they get a taste of what I do, and I get to dodge the gross sales stuff. (Though I do understand the value of actually putting the question to someone and asking them to buy — closing the sale — because without that they will happily drift off without buying anything in most cases.)

So that's one idea for the book you're talking about, creating a small, throwaway promotional thing, 'cause experience has taught me that review copies are a waste of time and energy. Even indie people, friends of friends who said they'd read it and write something, people who know you made it yourself, still don't ever get around to reading them. Magazines, newspapers, agent — same thing. Total waste. Better to focus on readers.

The other piece of advice, albeit bog-standard advice, would be — if the book has a specific angle to it, something a particular group of people are interested or involved in — to target them online, at meetings about that subject, and so on.

Oh, and a third thing: Readings and in-person events are where I've sold the most stuff. There's something about the force of someone's presence that gets past the hesitation to buy. On the next step down are situations where people can actually handle the book, and the bottom is online, where they're trying to make a decision based on a JPEG and some copy.

So that's what I know now.

Another evening walk.

2010-06-26T09:44:00.001+01:00

I'm loving living with my partner. He's my pal, my fan, and my co-adventurer.

Last night after work, he suggested we go someplace, so we went for a walk to The Whaligoe Steps and The Cairn of Get.

The Whaligoe Steps were 365 steps (now 330 and a few) up from an inlet where fishing boats moored. Women would walk up and down those steps all day long carrying creels (small baskets). Just making the climb once got me winded! (I better start training, 'cause we've agreed to walk up and down Ben Nevis later this summer as a neighbourhood fundraiser.)

After we got back up, a nice fella came out from the houses near the car-park, holding a picture of what the steps used to look like. He told us all about the place, chatting without any sense of the time, sharing everything he knew with total generosity — like all people in Caithness seem to do! (You don't want to try to have any quicky big-city-type transactions here.)

Unfortunately, I had trouble concentrating on what he was saying because the midges were out in abundance. Clouds of the tiny, biting specks hovered around us, and my basic mammalian instinct to wave and dance and try to get away from them made me look like a madman.

From there, we went to The Cairn of Get, an ancient burial site.

This stuff is just lying around here, within ten minutes' drive of our house!

Here's the full photo set.

Shooting the blanks.

2010-06-22T23:41:00.001+01:00

I just removed the blank hardcover books from the shop on my website. You can blame:

a) My crap photography, combined with my a mediocre phone camera, which made the books look junky. That doesn't reflect how I feel about them nor how people respond to them in person.

b) The experience is missing. The whole thing about handmade books is touching them, picking them up in your hand, and feeling the gravitational pull of the blank pages. They want your thoughts, your words, your scribbles and doodles! A JPEG does not achieve these things.

c) The pricing is impossible to get right. I make these by hand, and they're all different. The time and thought that takes can't be justified in a competitive price, nor do I want to slave to compete with the price of the Indonesian journals Paperchase.

d) It's not my business. The future I want to build is about writing and sharing more fiction. I love making these books and showing other people how to do that, and I do like how people react to them at book shows, but I think it may be a distraction to have them here.

I dunno. It's just something I'm trying. If I can get pictures that look better, I may reverse this decision. And maybe as a 'proof of concept' about the hardcovers ('cause I do want to encourage people that they can make those, too, if they want), I should make a few limited edition hardbacks of my novels.

Hardcovers are more complicated to make, but there's also the perception of increased value with them, so at least I can bump up the price some — and have fun making them.

Speaking of signature-bound, imposed book-blocks (we just were, honestly), I've been writing back and forth with the amazing Antonio from SintraWorks, who make PDF Clerk Pro, the program I use to do the imposition of my books (rearranging the pages so they'll print in the right order). I'm helping him test out a new product, and all I'll say is that this is going to be a really big help for people who want to produce their own books but find imposition programs confusing and cumbersome. The test version is already very helpful — as is Antonio; there is nothing like a developer who communicates and responds — but the final version is sure to be great.

From an e-mail I just sent...

2010-06-15T13:44:00.001+01:00

Wick is the antithesis of Toronto, where anything old (meaning "from the Seventies") that wasn't being used got swept away and replaced with a giant glass-and-steel robot. Here, there are derelict buildings about two hundred years old. They just sit; things grow out of them. Yet something's open right next door. I love that.

I'm a player.

2010-06-14T19:36:00.001+01:00

I wrote a little while back about how much I'd enjoyed a book called The Now Habit. It helped me with the stress I'd been feeling about getting things done.

One of the strategies I took away from the book was not looking at projects through the lens of "OhmyGod, I havetodothisallrightnow!", but just approaching work in small increments. "Always be starting," is the thinking.

I implemented this using something called The Pomodoro Technique: setting a timer and working for 25-minute intervals. Each completed 25-minute dash got me a star, and for a few months I kept track of those stars.

But what then?

Jane McGonigal is a game designer who contends that we achieve much more through play than we do through work, and that fun is the best way to change behaviour. Games, she says, give us all kinds of clear-cut rewards that real life often doesn't.

As a self-employed person, I sometimes wrestle with getting started and feeling a sense of accomplishment about what it's all for, because as much as I get done, there's more to do. Of course, this is great news, having a gig like that, and I'm grateful. And the people I work with are an utter dream; I could not ask for cleverer, more encouraging compatriots. But the work never gets done, and working in my little bubble, I don't often get chances to celebrate or, as McGonigal would put it, to win.

So I made up this game.

I was inspired by a boardgame idea in Keri Smith's Living Out Loud. Her books are wonderful encouragers of creativity and freedom, like an open window on a hot summer night. (He says, remembering when he lived in a place where summer nights were hot.) It took me a while to figure out how my game would operate, but I did it, I've been running it for two weeks, and it works!

Here it is:

And here are the rules:

1) Each domain of activity has its own piece. (Like "Books", "Work", "Organisation", "Shorthand", "Fitness", "Make Do and Mend", that sort of thing.)

2) In the daytimer I made, I outline my week.

On a little pad, I set up the things I want to work on for the week and stick that sheet into my daytimer.

For every 25-minute block of activity I do in that domain, I get a star, which I keep track of on a little tag for that day.

3) At the end of the day (or whenever I get around to reviewing my tags), I move my pieces forward by the number of stars I've collected.

4) Every ten places, there's an orange dot. When I pass one of these, I get to flick the spinner.

One of two things will happen on a spin: I draw a card, or I get money to put into "the lottery".

There are two types of card on the spinner:

Challenge cards. These require me to do something difficult, to set up a short-term "sprint" goal, or to articulate a big goal for that domain.

This folder is for holding the big goals:

Reward cards. These cards feature payoffs that I might otherwise forget to give myself — like pampery stuff, or, for instance, today when I finished my work, I got to go for a walk just for the hell of it. (I explored a hundreds-of-years-old cemetery in town I'd been meaning to walk through.)

The card might direct me to make an entry in my Book of Wins — writing down what I've achieved instead of just letting it evaporate off into the aether.

Money. If the spinner lands on a money space, that amount gets put into the lottery — kind of like an escrow account.

Every time I pass one of the green jelly-bean-shaped spaces on the board, I get to spin on this spinner:

Depending on how that turns out, the money either carries forward, or I get to take it as a treat. (I have a separate real bank account called "Mojo Money" which is just for gifts, trips, and fun, and this comes from that. So far, I don't think the amount from the game would ever exceed what I allocate to that account.)

This weekend, I got to buy myself a guilt-free bunch of bookbinding schwag with what I won from last week's activities.

4) Levelling up. Every hundred spaces, I "level up". In other words, I acknowledge the progress I've made in that domain, make an entry in the Book of Wins, and I can consider myself to be "one better" in doing that thing.

Okay, this probably seems utterly nuts to anyone who lives outside my head. But it's working for me... In the kind of way where "working" means "fun", which is what I'm trying to make this all about.

Snicker-snack!

2010-06-14T11:42:00.001+01:00

I had the chance this weekend to make five new books! My intention was just to make a little journal for myself, but I just kept going.

The new guillotine is excellent. I'm still learning how to drive it, but already it's proving to be just what I need. It would have made lunchmeat of Marie Antoinette!

It's like starting over.

2010-06-13T16:20:00.001+01:00

I've been talking with another indie publisher — someone whose efforts, results, and attitude I admire — about her appearing in an episode of my podcast.

In writing to her just now, I found myself spilling my guts about it all, and this made me realise that the brave face I put on about this stuff in the podcast doesn't authentically reflect all of how I feel.

Yesterday I unsubscribed in exasperation from yet another indie publishing blog in which yet another person was calling out for gatekeepers to protect their precious work (using criteria for judgment that happens to favour their work) from the atrocious attempts by the leagues of amateurs and hopefuls. I just get so tired of all the babble out there by people, many of whom don't actually write books themselves, and I have to cut off my exposure to it if I hope to ever create another novel.

Here's what I wrote to my indie comrade:

------------------------------

To be honest, I'm at that point when it's been a long time since I've written a book, I'm looking at another one on the horizon, yet I'm equal parts hopeful and doubtful about the point of the whole thing. Not that I'd give up, but it makes me weary sometimes, swimming up Niagara Falls, and all that market-stuff messes with my sense of creative expression ("Be pleasing! Be acceptable! Be mainstream!").
Some of the work is incredibly fun, and some of it I'm very proud of. Being a writer who's written several books and learned to do all the production, too, is an incredible, exceptional feat. And on the other hand, it's a kind of pointless thing to do and the world at large generally doesn't give a crap about it. So how does one find the energy to start the process again? (Because it's rewarding in so many ways and stopping is just not an option.)

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Then there's the issue of time: The idea I have in mind involves doing some research. I've got a pile of books here to go through, but when? I work, I have a personal life I didn't when I wrote the other books, and we've been having visitors and will continue to have more. Plus I've got the podcast, I'm trying to make books, and this week I'm going to be teaching two bookbinding classes.

Aaaargh!

Rightness.

2010-06-08T15:13:00.000+01:00

My wonderful, gifted, brilliant friend and co-worker Margaux updated our company's website with a graphic to go with some copy I wrote about their new e-books.

She pointed out that, had she the photo-shoot to do again, she'd show a hand from the thumb-side a hand. It didn't strike me as odd when I looked at it, but now I see her point.

Funny that we have an innate sense of "rightness" about some things. I guess it's taste, or instinct, or craft, or something. I haven't ever been able to articulate this for myself, why I like one phrase more than another, or why some things are just wrong in my estimation — for instance, that a media-form should never refer to that same media-form. ("Gosh, this is just like a horror movie. Bobby, that isn't funny. Bobby...?")

It's like the reverse of Aspergers', but for creativity: You know the social conventions about not doing this or that, or that such and such is expected (and then you have the opportunity to either satisfy or defeat that expectation).

Just like I know not to do some things that some of my countrymen do, like stick their hand down the front of their trackie-bottoms: no one told me not to do that, but... c'mon.

~

I started a DIY book episode last week and another blog entry, but lost them today when my computer a) refused to boot after I installed an update, and b) would only restore itself to a backup from last week, even though the thing's been doing back-ups the whole time.

Lost work is unusual, but I figured I'd give my non-Mac friends an opportunity to gloat if they needed to. Bad machine-things happen to us all from time to time.

Still, I'm up and running, and should be re-producing these lost things shortly. (Because I'm still enough of a backup freak that I could find all the bits.)

Goodness.

2010-06-03T23:19:00.001+01:00

I just wrote to a friend from work who asked how life was going up here. I figured I'd share that, 'cause folks are asking, and I've been writing about book-stuff here on the blog (when this is the one part of the site that doesn't have to just be about that).

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Craig's parents are coming to visit for a few days, so we were out shopping tonight. (I'm turning into the cook of the house — who knew?!)

First we went to the local Co-op, as I insist we do, but then we went to the giant, evil Tesco to get what the Co-op didn't have. As we left Tesco, I looked out over the green farmland stretching out in the distance, the spindly wind-turbines turning on the horizon, then looked up at the sky, which was every imaginable pastel colour, from pale blue to pink to orangey-yellow where the sun was starting to set.

It's small here. It's different. And I don't know quite how we fit into the picture. But it's a beautiful and old and broken place that's still surviving (its boom, because of the red herring, went a long time ago with the fish). I like it, and there's something good about being here.

And living with this guy is a dream. He is my partner in so many ways. He's kind and playful, good and fun.

I've got a great space to do my work in, and lots of hours for being creative.

This is a good time.

How I got here.

2010-06-01T16:43:00.001+01:00

I got a letter from someone in response to "DIY Book" — a young guy who's making some really lovely little books. He's talented, and right now the world isn't exactly heaping rewards on his head, 'cause I gather he's not so far into the game of "find out who'll will pay me to be me".

This reminded me of my early twenties in Toronto, which was a time full of earnestness and art and discovery and... difficulty. Here's how I described to him the path from there to here:

------------------------------

For a time in Toronto I sold greeting cards I'd made by hand. I'd left acting some time before and couldn't stomach any more waitering.

I hand-made the paper for the cards with a blender in the kitchen (I lived with my best friend, who was tolerant of the splashes on the walls). Then I cut out a window and stuck in little cartoons I'd drawn. It was do that or go on welfare, and one visit to that spirit-crushing office with all their humiliating questions was enough to convince me to go it alone and live by my abilities.

That kept me going for a few months until the next thing presented itself -- working with computers, since friends had chipped in to buy me one to help me reproduce my cartoons for the cards, and I discovered I had a knack for making computers do stuff.

That led to me doing graphic design, which led to me being able to design my first book and to the multimedia job that transformed into a job as a full-time copywriter.

And here I am, twelve years later, very happy, and making a good living.

So you never know.

Turpentine and Dad.

2010-06-01T16:29:00.001+01:00

I used wood-wax on something this weekend, and the smell of it reminded me of my Dad.

When I was little, he would stand me on his work-bench on a Sunday morning, my little feet in his big shoes while he polished them for church.

These kinds of memories keep coming up for me lately, about my dad's influence on me as I was growing up.

When my partner and I moved into this house a few weeks ago, we had to assemble a lot of furniture. Tightening screws, I was frequently reminded of his lessons about tightening them evenly, each a little bit, rather than screwing one down at a time.

Lots of things like that — tiny lessons that are so ingrained, and still useful.

I love my dad.

So much for that.

2010-05-31T18:06:00.001+01:00

I really do intend to stick to the plan I talked about... at some point. But not now, evidently.

The book-plough turned out to not work for paperbacks. The hot-glue on the spine dulled the plough's blade after one book, and the distributor confirmed that it can definitely only work on paper. (I know this now, after I spent an hour this morning cutting through two sides of a single paperback, sweating over the thing like a Viking rowing in the bowels of a ship.)

So that's... not good. It means I can't produce my novels, which is kind of the point of this whole endeavour. So this morning, when it became apparent that this lovely-looking piece of romantic, historical bookbinding gear was not fit for my purposes, I went online and ordered a new guillotine — one that isn't a Chinese knock-off like my previous one, but evidently has a laser indicator and... stuff.

Fingers crossed this will sort it. And the plough... I dunno. If I manage to sharpen the blade, it'll be fine for the insides of blank hardcover books. Or it'll just be a very big decoration.

Meanwhile, I got to play all afternoon yesterday and I'm almost finished my "keeping score" boardgame:

Savings plan.

2010-05-28T12:21:00.001+01:00

I spend too much money online.

Okay, scratch that: I've spent what I've spent; it's just time to stop for a while. Moving house was expensive, and I'd like to zero my debt again.

I struggle with consumerism, because on the one hand I know we in the West live an unsustainable lifestyle, and consuming is not creating. But, as a creative person I also know that it can be great and inspiring to have good tools. I like buying good tools (and I'd far rather buy something I can use to make an infinite amount of other things rather than buy a one-time enjoyment thing).

The challenge is that it's too damned easy to get an idea* of something to buy, and seconds later be logged into a site and buying it. The money flows just as quickly away, and not always advisedly. (And it's not "a treat" when you give them to yourself all the time!)

I have lots of other systems in place for dealing with my money. When my retainer comes in each month, it drops down a kind of Plinko board and gets divided into different accounts for different things (operations, income tax, insurance, savings, fun money, and pocket money).

The trouble with the internet stuff is that it lets me bypass all my systems and spend operations money or credit card money.

So here's my strategy:

I removed my payment information from iTunes. That's a constant money-leak, so small you don't notice it, but it adds up. I give myself £10 a day pocket money, and an album that costs £7.99 is a significant chunk of that daily allowance — but it comes from "nowhere", so I don't account for it, which creates a deficit.
I took my credit card out of my wallet and sealed it up in a little envelope which is locked away in a box in my office.
I reset my browser so it doesn't "helpfully" fill in ordering information.
Ah, but all my payment details are stored in a wallet application on my computer, as is all my login information for various websites. (As an aside, the recent Facebook security issues made me sit up and take action, and I've finally changed all my passwords to different, random strings.) A few sites are the big spending culprits or enable me to spend on other sites, so I deleted my login information from the wallet program and I made these little "credit cards" which I'm giving to my partner for safe-keeping. (There's a good argument that we behave better when we think we're being observed.)

Of course, you'd be right to ask, "Why don't you just stop it?" Well, it would be nice if that worked, but cold turkey goes down a lot better in a tasty sandwich.

Speaking of which, I'm getting close to finishing the little game for keeping score of my productivity that I mentioned a while back. More on that soon.

*I recently stumbled upon a great acronym for this: WWILF — What Was I Looking For? This nicely sums up the endless hours of mental hopscotch one can play on the Internet.

Speed the Plough!

2010-05-16T10:03:00.000+01:00

Just before I moved house, I posted my guillotine for sale on Gumtree — for a paltry price, too, just hoping to get some pocket money for the move. A man came and bought it, aiming to use it in producing a sports-related newsletter. I think it’ll work well for his job, but for books it was a half-angel, half-demon device.

Yes, it quickly sliced through a thick novel like the proverbial hot butter-knife. But no matter how carefully I lined up the book or how tightly I cranked down the bar that held the book in place, the blade would inevitably chop through the paper at an angle — usually not-quite-right, sometimes very wrong.

Picture a novel opened to a page, its right-justified text acting as a black, lettery ruler pointing out that the blank right margin gets closer and closer to the text as it goes down the page. I was never happy with that, and several times, in trying to fix it with additional cuts on the guillotine, I would ruin the almost-finished book. It was a very frustrating waste. I know people like the little imperfections that remind them a book is hand-bound, but this funny-angle business was a flaw I was comfortable with.

I sold the guillotine knowing another solution was on its way to me. Of course, I’d just given away my existing solution, so this new one had to work — my ability to make books and run my own press depended on it. So off went the heavy metal guillotine, and, just at the last minute arrived a book-binding lying press, wooden tub, and plough. I didn’t even have a chance to take them out of their boxes before the movers had to take them away.

Now that we’re all moved in, with everything unpacked and in its place, with the boxes all stored up in the attic, I finally had a chance to test out my equipment — which, even though it’s new, looks antique in its design. The parts are all big, heavy blocks of birchwood, and its threading screws are all hand-tooled.

I sewed together a couple of book blocks while watching TV with the fella the other night, then yesterday got to work with the plough. I was nervous, because my whole process depended on this working. And it did.

The plough proved to be worlds better than working with the guillotine, because I can set the book exactly where I want it in the press, then trim the edge with absolute precision. The result is so smooth — it feels wonderful on the fingertips. It takes much longer to go back and forth, back and forth with the plough, but it’s worth it to produce a predictable result and not ruin a whole book. And there’s something rewarding about doing something the way it was done for hundreds of years.

A friend gave me an old wallpaper sample book, so I decided to indulge myself and use some of its wonderful screenprinted pages for cover paper and end-papers. Here’s the result, which I present, for once, without any apology or excuses:

I can’t wait to try it on a novel. I may even decide to reduce the outside margins on my books, which will mean they’re thinner and use less paper. I had to leave a wide margin before to reduce the visible discrepancy between the angle of the type and the angle of the book’s edge.

Moving and not-moving.

2010-05-12T17:44:00.000+01:00

I'm sitting here in my new office, finished work for the day, and trying to figure out why I've been stuck for a while. Not stuck, really; I don’t subscribe to that whole writer’s block drama, which is about not being able to finish work you’ve started. I haven’t started anything for a while, and I’m wondering why.

It’s not like I haven’t been busy. I’ve been doing lots of other stuff — bookbinding, moving home and all that, and producing my podcast, but a new novel just hasn't been forthcoming.

I also don’t subscribe to the idea that artists have to be miserable to be productive. But I’ve been having a really happy time for the past year and a half, and along with the joy of this relationship has come a lot of new activity. Perhaps the truth of it is that artists who are miserable have to be productive because they’re alone; nobody wants to hang around that.

I guess I just haven't had anything to say, really. And now I've moved up here, and something unspoken that I’ve just admitted to myself is that I don’t feel I have anything to say that people here would relate to. It’s the gay thing — not that my work is all about that, but because that’s there, I think it could be alienating.

Then again, my experience so far is that such thoughts underestimate reality. Craig and I went to a neighbourhood meeting the other night, the new people on the block, and once again no one blinked an eye at our being a couple.

It feels, though, like I’m not writing anything because I’m censoring ideas before they gets anywhere close to the surface. What’s that about? Too much online reading of others’ opinions about books and publishing and what constitutes the “right” kind of book. Add to that a decade of writing books, putting them out, and learning that it doesn’t happen like magic, like the stories you hear before you’ve tried it yourself and discovered the realities.

I’m regrouping.

That said, I love my new creative space, and I am actually researching an idea for a novel — the least fanciful, most grounded one so far. I’m just waiting to see if there are enough ideas in it to light me up and carry me for a year and some.

The trick, I know, is for me to communicate with the story and tell the one that speaks to my heart the most, giving not one thought to what the world outside thinks. That might mean turning off Twitter, unfollowing some RSS feeds, and digging deep in myself instead. Ironically, I also know that not thinking about the result is the way to create the best result, whereas trying to be pleasing, measuring the market, and all that usual stuff one tries to do to avoid rejection is the surest way to produce a boring turd of a project.

I would be lying...

2010-05-07T12:39:00.000+01:00

...if I didn’t admit that it’s daunting to look around this place and realise I’m not just visiting here.

That said, the view when we were out buying groceries last night, out over wide open green fields, felt like a good thing. I remembered my grandmother declaring of Prince Edward Island, “You have more sky here!” It’s like that.

Walking into town this afternoon, I was extra-conscious of being polite on the pavement, stepping down onto the street for women with prams or the street-sweeper with his cart. Yesterday as the landlord was fixing things around our house, I brought up a news item I’d read about in the local paper’s RSS feed, and it turned out he was one of the people involved. Yup, everyone knows everyone, so I will have to make sure my Canadian politeness will be turned up to its highest setting.

I passed several pairs of people who’d stopped to chat on the street, and now I’m in the old post office, which has been converted into a chain pub (that offers free WiFi), and several customers have stopped at someone’s table to say hello as they came in.

But I don’t know anyone. Not yet. And I’m not sure how that will start to change.

No regrets, though. I like an adventure.