I was carrying around a calendar I’d printed out as part of my “get back to paper” scheme, but it was too big to fit in my pocket. I knew it would take some work to create a smaller alternative, so I kept putting it off. Last night, I finally did it, and I’m really happy with the result.
It’s silly to spend an hour making a book like this when I could buy a pocket diary anywhere for £1 or less, but that’s not the point. This calendar is truly mine. Picking it up makes me happy, and as a result I feel compelled to use it.
I’m even tentatively entering some events in shorthand — which I seem to have developed a mania for. But it’s hard to find time to practice properly.
I love my job and the people I work with, but I could make really good use of a paid sabbatical right about now. I would:
Write the two novels I have in mind.
Learn all the shorthand “brief forms” and the proper way to form the strokes.
Do some painting.
Teach a DIY Book course that would give participants a finished copy of their book, along with the skills to make as many more as they like, a string of ISBNs for their titles, and an e-commerce-capable website.
…And probably a lot of other stuff.
This is probably touchy territory, but I would like maternity leave. There are seven billion of us on the planet and a resources crisis imminent, so I’d like to have paid time off to better myself, as opposed to having a baby.
The Scottish Poetry Library book fair on Saturday was great. I’m encouraged that there’s such a strong tide of independent publishing finally arriving here, and the art-books I saw displayed there were stunning, too.
The talk I gave seemed to be popular, and hopefully left the audience with a sense of possibility and some practical ideas for “What’s next?” if they want to do this themselves.
I tried not to come across as bitter, ’cause that’s really not how I feel these days as an indie publisher, but there is a lot of bad news to deliver when people start asking questions about publishing from a hopeful position, thinking about themselves and their dreams without having considered the market realities in which publishers operate and think.
Meanwhile, these new possibilities make it truly simple to create a book and get it into the world. All the other considerations about marketing, sales, fame, and all that other industry bumpf is for much later. People make a mistake, I believe, when they put that stuff first, because surely all the satisfaction and stamina we need for our writing careers will come from focusing on what we’re doing and who we’re doing it for rather than what we want to get out of doing it.
It struck me today that, in terms of selling books, this event is less like a farmer’s market and more like a petting zoo. At least people wanted to touch, feel, and look at my books a lot — especially a teeny-tiny one the size of a thumbnail I made for the occasion. Everyone loved that, even though it’s just about useless!
Yesterday my partner Craig took me for a drive to a place called Little Sparta. It’s the garden and home of the late poet and sculptor Ian Hamilton Findlay, who filled the grounds around his home with all kinds of stones and paths, all marked out with beautifully carved words and phrases. The weather was overcast, and the walk up to the house along a road through sheep-fields was quite ‘whiffy’, but it was still a lovely day out.
I’m going out for dinner on Tuesday with Craig, then we’re doing something or another on Friday, ’cause it’s — *gasp!* — our anniversary. Now I’ve seen everything.
I have beside me the 1949 edition of the Gregg Shorthand Manual Simplified. It has that great, musty smell of an old book.
I’m touch-typing as I write this, which I’m quite proud of. It’s a skill I’ve long wished I had, but until recently assumed I couldn’t pick up at this point in life. “In high school” I’d say, “if you were smart you could were allowed to take Band instead of Typing, so I took Band. Shame then, that as a writer I don’t exactly need to play the clarinet every day, but typing…”
It’s an old story, and now it’s no longer true. Oh, sure, I’m stumbling over my fingers, having to remember to put them on the home-keys, but I’ve picked up a new skill.
This came out of a conversation with my partner’s cousin, in which she said she could type and do shorthand and that this was a real advantage at work. Classic steno-pool skills — how I’d love to have them, I said. I scribbled a little note for myself to look into typing and shorthand, and followed up on it the next day.
I bought a program called KAZ: Keyboard A-Z. It’s unbelievably ugly, and operates like a CD-ROM from about 1996. Its mascot is a horrible cartoon bird. As someone who’s doodled for years, I can’t describe all the reasons I hate this thing, so I’ll provide a picture:
But the program says it can teach you to type in 90 minutes, and it did. I’ve actually got to go back and finish it, ’cause after a certain point I was just typing. (Of course, I forced myself to type properly in my everyday work, which helped a lot, or I’d still be doing that lobster-claw manoeuvre with my right hand.)
So with that success under my belt, I moved on to shorthand. That’s significantly harder, but I am gradually getting it. It’s kind of a weird, antiquated skill to pursue, but there are lots of times when it would be a huge help (taking creative briefs from a phone call, transcribing an interview).
My experience with smelly old books is that they’re wonderful and charming, but if they’re instructive, they’re always a bit “Oh yeah, we’ve learned something better than that since then.” But with these books — which are so cheap to buy online, ’cause there are piles of them just sitting around from the time when these courses were common — contained in them is a neat ability from the past that we’ve lost. Working through the exercises, I wonder why we don’t all write like that instead of in this tedious, convoluted way (which I never thought I’d say, being one of those people who rails against Internet arguments for lazy spelling).
The books I’ve picked up have this wartime and just-post-war feel to them, and learning from them (with drills like “The French will take the trench”) kinda puts you right in that period. I don’t want to naïvely glamourise an unthinkably difficult period in history, but I wonder if I’m not the only person who yearns a bit for that “Make do or mend” philosophy over the present glut of commercial and celebrity culture.
And reading through the sample paragraphs written in shorthand — even re-reading what I’ve written — is such a slow torture that I’m being driven back, back, to sit beside myself at four or five years old. Oh right, there was a time when I didn’t know how to read. That was hard.
I remember it being just as hard later on as I tried to put my thoughts into sentences. It was like trying to walk inside a rubber ball.
It’s kinda nice, though, spending time in my mind with me-at-five, having sense-memory unlock lost little moments from kindergarten and Grade One.
~
My folks were here for a visit a few weeks ago. We had a great time together, with the fella driving us all over creation, the parents meeting the parents, and all that. It was a wonderful, beautiful visit, even with some uncomfortable reminders that the years are creeping up on us. I’m trying my damnedest to appreciate my parents for the good, honest, loving, and fun people they are now, to live that second chance the first time around.
For some reason all this ephemerality, the wabi-sabi of it, makes me want to get married. And the fella seems okay with that. Of course, the thought of the logistics of actually doing such a thing knocks the notion squarely back into the “Someday” closet
So I’ve neglected my blog for a while. Big deal, eh? Living has kept me busy, along with making preparations for my participation in the Scottish Poetry Library’s small press fair, “By Leaves We Live”. If you’re in Edinburgh, please come by on Saturday, say hi, and have a look over the stuff I create. I’ll also be giving a talk about indie publishing.
I still have another DIY Book episode to produce, and then the first section of the three-part process will be complete. At long f*ing last, I’ve managed to getthe podcast up on iTunes properly so all the episodes are shown and can be downloaded. It’s been a frustrating process, and all the “It’s here… now it’s there… now it’s broken” has surely shaken off some listeners, which I regret.
The real momentum behind the thing will probably come when the whole process (write, make, and sell your book) is outlined in however many episodes that takes. That’ll be a while, but it’s neat to look back and realise that I’ve nearly completed the first part, and I didn’t know how I was going to do that.
Progress is most encouraging.
~
The main intention of this entry was just to start writing here again, to take the blog off the “Obligation” shelf and do it just for fun. I realise shorthand, typing, and the transitory nature of life probably don’t come across sounding all that fun. Ah well.
Serialise Like the Dickens. Your novel is underway, and sharing your work in progress can be a great way to keep it alive. But beware the lurking murderers!
I had a blast reading at Underword last night. Well, that was half the fun, getting to present something I’d enjoyed and hearing the wide variety of “cover version” stories the others read. The other half of the fun was going to the pub afterward and getting to meet more Edinburgh book-folk. It’s easy to despair about the state of things, but these people are out there, madly writing, getting their work finished, packaged, and presented, and inspiring people to read and write.
Particularly valuable was a chat with someone from Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature. I had a lot of cynicism about this organisation and its purpose, which seemed to be about promoting its creators and the work of Edinburgh’s long-dead white guys or the super-rich, don’t-need-the-help mega-authors, while ignoring those of us on the fringes who are trying to create new work.
It ain’t true — not anymore, at least. They may be very small, but ECOL are doing a lot of good work around the city. They’ve even created a bridge between independent up-and-comers and the Edinburgh Book Festival. I never thought I’d see the day. (For years, I’ve dismissed the Book Festival as expensive celebrity worship.)
So it’s time to give up some outdated stories about this city, get out of my cave, and see if I can help make stuff happen. We’re not there yet, but there are fewer obstacles than I thought, and some devoted, willing helpers out there.
I made a copy of Finitude to have in my bag for the occasion, and gave it to the ECOL woman when she told me her compatriot at work is passionate about hand-made books. We also talked about the possibility of a ‘zine community in Edinburgh, like the one she saw in Adelaide, Australia and I’ve seen in Toronto, Canada. This from the ECOL! So I couldn’t have been more wrong about them.
Before last night’s event, after work, I’d been looking at expensive perfect-binding machines, wondering what the next evolutionary stage is for me in bookbinding. Then I gave my head a shake and just made that copy of Finitude, because I can do that already, and fairly quickly. My flatmate reminded me, too: “But your thing is telling people that they can make books themselves without all kinds of industrial equipment!”
Oh, right. I’m forever encouraging people to not ask for permission, not to get mired in arguments about the validity of their art, but just go ahead and do their own thing. Still, there’s that slight twinge of shame that this page is a little crooked or that cover isn’t very fancy.
Each of us has the right to our own “culture of one”, and we should never apologise for the things we create, or get lost in comparisons.
It’s easy to fall into bad thinking. I suppose it provides an excuse for not trying, and sometimes it’s difficult to muster the energy to keep getting back up and getting out there. Sometimes, though, things are better than I think.
People are forever telling me “You’ve got to read this book!”, but my stack of to-reads is already overwhelming, so I wouldn’t say this to anyone if I didn’t absolutely mean it, but if you’re at all involved with writing or publishing… you’ve got to read this book: How I Became a Famous Novelist, by Steve Hely. You will wet yourself.
It’s about a guy who works as a copywriter and discovers that his ex-girlfriend from college is getting married. He wants to show her up, but he’s a nothing, so he decides to become a famous novelist by writing a perfect con-job of a novel, reverse-engineering the bestsellers so he’s guaranteed to get rich.
Hely sets every last clump of publishing world horsesh*t on fire. He parodies every type of fiction going, and it’s note-perfect. but in the end, he surprised me by transcending it all to tell a story that isn’t just a collection of snark, but has a heart, too.
My flatmate’s father has a website and a blog now, because he just came out with a book. Today, he wrote a beautiful blog entry about his 43rd anniversary. It’s a lovely tribute to the relationship he and his wife have built.
My parents’ 50th anniversary is in a couple of days, and as I come up to my own first anniversary, I appreciate the wonderful example these relationships provide.
“Story is conflict,” they say, so we don’t often hear stories about enduring relationships. The first blush and later clashes make better drama. Our culture celebrates people making an ugly mess out of the things they’ve started, and actively encourages following our feelings around from moment to moment, regardless of the hurt and damage that causes.
It’s nice to see this proof that with self-awareness, deliberation, commitment, and work it’s possible to make a joy ongoing.
The fella and I were in Brighton last weekend, where I was finally able to get back to Vegetarian Shoes. My trainers were suffering from “hole in the sole” and my boots had a crack right across the bottom.
I’m not a clothes shopper, but even I will acknowledge that when the rain gets in your shoes, you are either desperately poor or just being stubborn. So I gave in, since I had this chance to shoe-shop in good conscience (as much as possible; man-made materials still have their issues).
How sad, though, to leave behind my old shoes. They’ve carried me through years of life in Scotland, summers and winters in Canada, and on trips to Spain, Italy, and France. All those miles, all those moments.
Bye-bye. Hopefully someone will be able to fix you up into something useful, and those trod-in memories will somehow make it better.
The fella and I were in Brighton last weekend, where I was finally able to get back to 