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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.

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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.

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I wrote a little while back about how much I’d enjoyed a book calledThe 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.

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.

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!

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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:

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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!

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Here I am in my new home.

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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