Author: hamishmacdonald

Buying stuff.

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.

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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.)

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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.

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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:

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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.

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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.

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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:

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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.

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A video episode in which I demonstrate how you can make a hardcover book with basic materials.

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.

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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.