It’s a bit ironic, my latest breakthrough in bookbinding: For so long, I struggled to get even edges on my books. That led to my buying a blade-arm guillotine, which went a long way to giving my paperback novels a professional finish.
Then I found a corner-punch so I could give my blank books nice rounded corners, like the Moleskine books that people love so much. (This blog shows some of the beautiful things people use them for.)
Today in the post I received an awl for punching holes in pages that will make up a book (I wrote to the sellers to have a laugh about the fact that, for safety, they sent the awl stuck into a wine-cork. That speaks of a certain joie de vivre, I said. “What worries me,” replied the vendor, “is that no matter how many awls we sell, we still have more corks!”). I also got what looks like a cross between a large clear plastic ruler and a sword, with a sharp, ragged edge on either side. This is for tearing “deckled” edges into paper.
I know: I bought something to make torn pages look torn. But somehow there’s a difference between things that don’t have a clean edge and things that are deliberately torn this way. So now I’ll probably be going through a “looks like it was carried by a pirate” phase.
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I’m writing this, having just got home from the Traverse Theatre bar. I had to walk around for a while to find a place where there was room to sit and work, since my usual haunts were either closed for the night or were overflowing with people going to the Tattoo. (And I’m fussy about where I work; not class-fussy, but right-atmosphere fussy.)
I went there to start Chapter Six. I was worried about it, because it seemed like one of those “bridge” chapters, just to get us from here to there. So I stopped, went back to the notebook I made for this project (which has rounded corners and straight edges), and I asked myself “What is this chapter for? How does it add pressure?” I also went back to the overall arc of the story to remind myself what it’s about, so that this would be connected to that.
I haven’t finished the chapter, but I wrote the first block/scene/sequence in it, and I’m totally jazzed. The characters are in trouble right off the bat, and there is big, big stuff set up for later. And it’s just going to keep going from here, being more frantic and loopy.
Writing is fun. Telling stories is funner.
On the way to the Traverse, I saw this:
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Every couple of months, I go to the Chinese grocery store a few blocks away, and I walk back with a huge sack of rice on my shoulder, like I’m bringing aid to the colony houses (as if that would be necessary).
This time, the bag was smaller, but then, this is no ordinary rice:
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p>The plastic medal on the bag informs me that this is EXTRA SUPER QUALITY rice.
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A friend of mine was at the theatre tonight (to see a play — go figure). She’s lost two people from her life recently, one older and somewhat expectedly, one younger and completely unexpectedly. Another friend lost his younger brother, which also falls into that “tragic, unexpected, seems wrong” category.
I care about them both, but we’re not that familiar that I know what to do. I love one thing Dan (the husband of the couple who own the company I write for) said when I was in Toronto this summer:
When these things happen, people tend to ask, “Is there anything I can do for you?” That puts a tremendous burden on the other person, because then they’re not only going through this experience, they’re also now responsble for thinking about you. I find that a better question to ask is, “What one thing could I do for you right now that would make your life easier? It doesn’t matter how small it is; what do you not want to deal with that I could take off your plate?” In one case, someone asked me to pick up their dry-cleaning; they just couldn’t do it.
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p>I liked that. Of course, it’s hard not to be shy about asking when you’re not in someone’s immediate circle, where you’re actually available for daily load-lifting.
I want a pin that says I am a good citizen.
