Book Igloo

What an awesome piece constructed entirely from books!

Of course, being a voracious reader, all I can think is — what if I want to read the one on the bottom?!

See more images at Colossal Art & Design.

–SueBE

 

Promotional Video’s Go Beyond the Book

Recently my friend Joelle Anthony launched her second YA novel, The Right and the Real.  Joelle being Joelle, hilariously creative, put together a trailer that goes far beyond the book itself.

What lessons can you learn from a trailer like this?

• Don’t just advertise your book.  Advertise yourself.  You are after all, something many people aspire to be.  An author!
• Use humor wherever possible.
• And don’t be afraid to recruit others.  Make use of the divas in your life.

Can Joelle Anthony separate fact from fiction?  Inquiring minds want to know!  But I’d say the trailer did a wonderful job.  Ever tried to watch YouTube with someone looking over your shoulder? “Watcha watchin?”

–SueBE

Inspiration: Tessellated Paper Art

As I’m sure you know by now, I always look for inspiration in the work of other artists and I found it with the tessellated paper art of Joel Cooper.  Cooper’s work looks woven but it is created from intricately folded single sheets of paper.

His Flickr feed shows off more of his work.  At left is his mask, Naiad.  Now take a look at the photo on the right.  That’s an unfolded test piece with creases marked.  Imagine turning it into a mask!

This is the kind of work that simply fascinates me.  Seeing how paper can be turned into amazing three dimensional objects.

Writers?  What can you do with your words?  Can you use them to build astonishing three dimensional worlds?

Special thanks to the Pop-Up Studio NYC for bringing this amazing artist to my attention.

–SueBE

What Does It Take to Be a Writer?

Yesterday I wrote about how driven I am to set writing goals for myself.  When I discuss things like this, I’m amazed at how many people get all dewy eyed.  ”I wish I could write every day.”

For these people, I have a question.  Why can’t you?

Now, I’m not completely clueless.  Some people cannot write every day.  I have one writing buddy who requires uninterrupted time.  If she has to run the kids here and there that say, she’s too distracted to write.  But give her a nice chunk of time and she’s very productive.

She knows this so she plans for it.

Me?  I write in fits and starts.  I write hard and fast (up to 3 new pages in 30 minutes) but it also means that once I do this, I’m toast.  Sometimes I can do it three times a day, but I have to recharge between times.  This may have to do with the fact that I wrote with a toddler at home.  I didn’t have uninterrupted stretches of time.

It could also be that I have the attention span of a ground squirrel.

I know other people who can sit and write for hours and hours at a stretch.   I suspect these are the most productive writers but I don’t know any of them well enough to pry.

How do you write?  Figure it out and then find a way to work it into your life.  You may be someone who writes daily.  You may be someone who writes once a week.  Figure it out.

And then write.

To paraphrase Yoda, “There is no wish, there is only write.”

That’s what is going to make you a writer.

–SueBE

Goal Setting

As you can see, I blog quite a bit about writing goals.  Why?  Because writing is hard work and, if we don’t set goals, it is often easier to sit around and eat bon bons than it is to write.

Last week was my first week with my new goals chart.  My husband claims it is ridiculously complex.  To me, it seems fairly simple.

At the top of the board are the days of the week.  Goals are color coded — red (you’re getting paid so get busy), yellow (no deadline, fun stuff), and green (nonpaying promotional).

This is more visual than the lists that I had previously posted here and a great deal harder to ignore.  On Monday, I finished most of Monday’s work and all of Tuesday’s.  By Tuesday, I had finished what remained of Monday’s work and part of Wednesday’s.  Of course, I also realized that I needed to get going on to more assigned articles so I had to add four more items to the latter part of the week.

All in all, I’m really happy with this system and plan to keep using it.  I think it will work really well with my recurring jobs (blog posts, etc) and also the big jobs that need to be broken down over the course of several weeks.

Between my office calendar (due dates) and this, I feel much more on top of things.

Does this mean this is the perfect system for you?  Not at all.

My friend Jennifer J. loves the app she has on her I-thing-a-ma-bob (I suspect it is an I-phone but am not sure).  Me?  In spite of my love of wii games and the fact that I have more video memory and the best monitor in the house, I’m still pretty low-tech about some things.  My phone is a phone.  My camera is a camera.  And my calendar has pages.

Either kind of system would work whether or not you have signed contracts.  Set your own deadlines.  Tell your critique group.  Get them to nag you as needed (hi Stephanie!).

Other people work better with a simple word count goal.  This is especially helpful if you are a one project at a time kind of writer.  A novel takes months, or at the very least weeks, so a goal of 10,000 words a week might be best in that case.

Other people prefer a time goal. I will write for 2 hours a week.

Play around with your goals.  Find something that works for you.   But do find something.  Otherwise you may forget to write.

Again.

–SueBE

 

Book Design

We’ve all seen them, cover designs that make us wonder what the heck the book designer had in mind.  But then there are those other designs — the ones that simply make you pick up the book and page through it.

If you are at all interested in book design, check out this video with Chip Kidd, Associate Art Director at Knopf Books.  Kidd discusses typography and images vs text as well as how the images chosen and how they are laid out can reveal quite a bit about the story itself.

Warning:  This guy is not a children’s book designer.  If someone swearing curls your hair or you are put off by basic male anatomy, don’t watch the video.  Was I offended?  I live with a teen boy.  Need I say more?  I’m not Kidd’s mom so I’m really much less concerned by how he comes across.

After watching this, I get why I fail to respond to so many self-published book covers.  There is just so much that goes into basic cover design.  Don’t show and tell.  You should be able to choose a type that represents the word.  What do I mean by that?  (see the image to the left). Remember this is me, not a book designer who could do a much better job.  But there is a lot to consider when you create a cover and if you don’t know anything about design, how greatly are you handicapping your own work?

–SueBE

Another Book Banning

The Dirty Cowboy by Amy Timberlake may be an award winning picture book but that’s not enough to keep it on the shelves of grade school libraries in Lebanon, Pennsylvania.  Because one student’s parents objected to the illustrations, the book has been removed.

The book is about a cowboy who orders his dogs to take guard his clothes while he takes his annual bath.  The bath-transformation is so complete that the dog will not give the cowboy, who no longer smells familiar, his clothes.

Sounds harmless enough?  It wasn’t the story the parents objected to but the illustrations.  Given that Mr. Cowboy spends a great deal of time trying to get his clothes back, he also spends a great deal of time naked.  The illustrator, Adam Rex, cleverly places a variety of objects to censor the naughty bits, but that wasn’t enough for these particular parents.

Although they didn’t initially compare the book to porn, this was their answer when asked what they felt that viewing or reading this material might lead to.  Their response?  ’Children may come to the conclusion that looking at nudity is OK, and therefore pornography is OK.’

I believe that most writers will agree — parents should have a say in what their children read.  So look in your kid’s backpacks and see what they’ve got.   But that’s not what these parents did.  This book has now been removed from the library shelves.  Now no one at these schools has access.

What a pity.  Some kids might have had a good laugh and been turned on to reading.  How awful!  (Please note: if you aren’t hearing sarcasm, try again.)

If you want to read more about this, there are two stories from the local paper (A-C Board Votes to Remove Dirty Cowboy and “Dirty Cowboy book pulled from Schools) and a video.  The video is of a teacher reading the book at the districts Celebrate Reading event which took place before the ban.

–SueBE

Birth of a Book

What a coincidence that I happened to find this video when I did.  A friend and I were just discussing why the blank pages at the end of some novels.  I assumed that all writers understand the why and wherefore of signatures.  You know what they say about assumptions.

A signature is a bundle of pages in a book.  Tip a hard cover book on edge and you’ll see what I mean.  A picture book generally has two of these bundles (called signatures) and that’s why the majority are 32 pages long.  One signature: 16 pages.  Two signatures:  32 pages.

A signature is a product of how books have traditionally been printed — numerous book pages on one sheet of paper.

Watch the video and you’ll see what I mean.  I would so love to own one of these wonderfully crafted books.  Yes, as if you didn’t already know, I’m a book nerd.

–SueBE

 

Good Nonfiction Owes a lot to Fiction

I’m one of the many writers who pens (or keyboards) both fiction and nonfiction and one of the many blessings I’ve seen arrive in the nonfiction world is creative nonfiction.

Unlike strictly informational nonfiction (the stuff we grew up on), creative nonfiction authors are free to set scenes.  Their work tells a story — the character wants something and their dialog reveals who they are, their values and their goals.

Don’t be alarmed.  Creative nonfiction is still fact based — you can’t make up dialogue, manipulate the goals of individual people are change the setting.  You are strictly describing what took place.

To find out how this works, check out “Nonfiction for Fiction Lovers: Today’s Creative Nonfiction” on the ICL web site.

–SueBE

Keeping Track of Your Goals

For a while now, I’ve had the feeling that keeping track of my goals on the blog hasn’t been working.  I post my goals at the beginning of the week but then don’t always bother to update them as I go.  Also, if I do ignore something, continuing to ignore it is just way too easy.

I need something a bit more in my face.  Something more visual.

This is especially important because I already have 3 May deadlines, 2 June deadlines, 3 July, 1 August, 1 September, 1 October, and 2 November.

At the retreat, Jennifer J. suggested some I-phone app that lets you schedule things and upgrades them to RED as they go critical.  It works really well for her but there are multiple problems for me.

• I can go days without touching my phone so this would probably be even less  in-my-face than my blog.
• I need something more visual.
• I don’t have an I-phone.  I live in a world without apps.  I don’ t have even one.

So instead of posting my goals on my blog, I’ll be posting them week by week on a bulletin board.  Like Jennifer’s app, I have green, red and yellow.

• Green goals:  Blogs, nonpaying.
• Yellow goals:  My own work.  No contract.  No deadline.
• Red goals:  Jobs for which I have contracts.

I’ve got things broken down into doable steps and pinned on a bulletin board.  Fingers crossed but I have a good feeling about this although it will take a while to get all of it written up.

I’ll also be posting my word count goals on my Facebook wall.

How are you keeping track of your goals?

–SueBE