#1 On making books
Hello friends,
To mark our turning into 2022, I made a little ‘zine’ to send to loved ones and kindred spirits.
This little booklet offering includes some doodles, some questions, and a few other finds from 2021. It is simply made and pretty dinky.
As I was collating it, a steady stream of book-making memories drifted through my mind – prompting me to recognise that I’ve been crafting and curating books for a very long time!
I’m glad my mum saved some from my early years. This book of “pome’s” made by my seven-year-old self is something of a treasure ...
Looking up from my desk, it’s evident that I’ve crafted no shortage of paper-based collections. I am indeed a book-maker, even if historically of the rather private kind – shaping, adapting, and curating books for my own use and pleasure or as a gift for a loved one.
Now, after many years of writing, drawing and making in quiet spaces, I’m venturing towards more public domains. I have a few book offerings in the making – ones I’d like to publish and make more widely available in the not-too-distant future (hopefully!).
In this, the ‘story I’ve been telling myself’ is that I am embarking on a new-new thing. But now I see I am actually doing something I’ve been doing for a long time, and simply doing it for a wider audience.
I’m reminded of something Parker Palmer shared in ‘Let your Life Speak’. As a child, he made many, many books about aviation – with detailed drawings and annotations. Given this obsession, he was convinced he was bound for a career as a pilot or in aeronautical engineering. Yet now, decades later, he knows that it was the investment in writing and books – not the specific topic of aviation – that became a golden thread of activity weaving through his life.
~
The books I’m working on are taking much longer to craft than my little new-year zine or my childhood book of poems.
I find projects not driven by external pressures require a particular dedication and can be annoyingly susceptible to doubts, detours, and delays. But I am persisting.
I want to keep showing up to the work so the books I’m incubating can make their way into the world.
I’m challenged by Liz Gilbert’s declaration in ‘Big Magic’: “Holding yourself together through all the phases of creation is where the real work lies.”
So, I continue to work – on both the content and the persisting!
~
I’m very conscious there are many of us ‘working away’ on a vast array of projects and passions. We show up – habitually or in fits-and-starts – to these things that whisper for our attention.
In this journey, two questions are around for me:
What helps me persist ‘through all the phases of creation’?
and
What collective rituals do we have (or need!) to help us honour and affirm the ‘slow, deliberate work’ that happens in hidden places, far from the wham-bam energy of casual meet-ups and social media?
~
I close with a little message – something I wrote to myself some years back. It remains a helpful reminder and encouragement. It may even be a poem. A photo of it sits near where I work.
“Forget not
this journey seems to be
one of persistence;
slow
deliberate
within my means”
~
Friends, I hope you, too, have some lovely words or images close at hand, and perhaps some little rituals or habits – things that remind you to simply take the next step in the work you do – for, of course, that is the only one we can ever take.
With love as we journey,
Wendy
WORTH SHARING
Five treasures that have been a gift – enhancing my book-making and wider pursuits:
Rachel Hazel’s Bound is a treasure trove for making handmade paper beauties. It’s also so beautifully presented. Visit her at The Travelling Bookbinder for further inspiration and tools.
Parker Palmer’s ‘Let your Life Speak’ – a succinct and elegantly written reflection on vocation. Full of wisdom. Soulful stuff.
Liz Gilbert’s Big Magic – an exuberant yet also pragmatic exploration of creativity in practice. Thought-provoking, challenging and heartening.
Austin Kleon’s Keep Going is fabulous in both form and content with super sage advice and for persisting in creative work.
The Creative Habit from dancer and choreographer Twyla Tharpe offers practical advice, transferable perspectives and experiments for anyone pursuing creative work.