In the beginning was the word….that a serious writer must spend 30% of her creative time on marketing! If the goal is to publish then the path – a rocky one – is to create a web presence. Et le voila. So where is the book? On the equally rocky path to completion, she said, stuck in the experimentation and prototyping stage, she said, with little regard for centuries of publishing history, the shape of the standard book, or her hard-working inner administrator. A few of the prototypes are on display here. The bound book is the fruition a one-day bookbinding course in 2017 taught by Ksenia Kopystynska of Ars Libri in Kingston http://arslibribooks.com/. I’ve also made one-page foldies, inspired by a book called Drawing Comics.
The year really starts now, as school starts. As the dog days fade and the tingle of autumn revives my inner administrator’s organising instincts, it is time to bring long ongoing works to a close, to narrow the possibilities, to funnel them through the filter of probabilities, to honour all those who helped me…muses, publishers, writers, the published, photographers, webmasters, editors.
In the beginning is the blank book. In the end is the word. Colette’s father mythically worked each day on a book, a labour of love for his wife, which in the end, when retrieved from his safe, was found to be completely empty. The myth was that his love was so great there were no words to express it; his book was empty of all but love and compassion, pure and white as the skyless cloud.