I Learned ...

10. One tree yields enough paper to produce 62.5 books.

What will happen to books? Will they stop being made from paper and ink? When will we all buy e-readers and download books? I ask myself these questions all the time. I wonder (as a writer, digital literature researcher and a reader) what will change. I worry a bit and then I get excited about all the new possibilities that I can't even imagine yet.

I was thinking about all this today and I found out that books, on average, use a huge amount of paper. I'm not sure whether I think we shouldn't use paper for books. We use paper for worse things. But it made me think about the world and the place that books have in it. I need paper books around for a bit longer. And libraries, I definitely need libraries full of books.

Finishing

I have been writing a story for as long as I can remember. It is one particular story that I have been wanting to tell. It has been bubbling around in my imagination for years trying to get out.

It took me a long time to get started. I worried that it wouldn’t be good enough, that no one would read it, that even I wouldn’t want to read it. I tried and tired and failed to start and tried again. Then I decided to take it slowly and steadily. 1000 words at a time. I chipped away at it gently and now I have almost finished the first draft. I am about 5,000 words from the end. Of course there is editing and re-writing to do but this is the end of the first stage.
 

It feels huge but doesn’t feel how I expected it to. When I have been this close to the end of writing a non-fiction book, I want it to end. I want to email it to someone and never see it again. I want print all the pages off the computer and send them far away. I feel relieved and tired, proud of myself but ready to finish. This time I want to hold on to the book. I am not exactly sure how it will end and I like that feeling. I like it how it is and I don’t want it to finish.

It is funny that I didn’t want to start this book and now I don’t want it to end.

I Learned...

9. A woodpecker sounds a bit like its laughing at me.

Sort of. I don’t think I had ever heard one before today. I have still never seen one. I need to change that.

I Learned...

8. I would rather live in a deciduous forest than a pine forest.

I would rather live in a deciduous forest than a pine forest. I learned this today while walking my dogs in a pine forest. I prefer the jumbled chaos of deciduous forests. Pine just seemed too neat.

I daydream constantly about living in a log cabin in the woods, with gingham curtains and a wood burning stove. But it would have to have high speed broadband and be near a big city. That’s where the dream always falls apart for me.

A Field Guide to Now

I love reading My Topography. It's author Christina is such a talented writer. Her latest project is the brilliant A Field Guide to Now. She describes it as 'An illustrated collection of essays and prose exploring the present tense. A field guide to the marks and traits and habits of now.'

She is trying to raise enough money to fund the project and needs your help.

I have donated a chance to win a place on the Handmade Writer e-course (which starts 12th April) to supporters of her project. All you have to do is head over to her site and pledge money towards her project. She is collecting money through Kickstarter so it's really easy to donate.

I think this is such a fantastic project and really worth supporting. I think it is incredibly important to support writers who are bravely following their dreams. I know Christina would really appreciate your support.

I Learned ...

7. Playing the accordion is very difficult.

I was given an accordion for my birthday. I wanted one badly. I imagined myself playing French songs, Bulgarian folk songs and the soundtrack from Amelie.

Then I got intimidated. It was so loud when I played it. I was worried about my neighbours. I didn’t want them to come round and ask me what was going on, like they did when I got a puppy and she shrieked all night like a monkey. The noises I was making with my accordion where that bad. So, I put the accordion on a shelf and ignored it for months.

Today I took the accordion down. I looked up simple sounding songs on Youtube. I tried again. Properly this time. I learned that yes, playing the accordion is very difficult.

Spinning a Yarn

We talk about writing in a similar way to crafting. We gather material, spin a yarn, weave a tale, unravel a story. We talk about the craft of writing. The processes are definitely similar. We hunt for scraps of ideas, piece them together and create something new. There is skill and technique needed to put the pieces together and in the way we talk about what we’ve done.

Both writing and crafting feel familiar to me. They feel part of the same thing - the process of searching for ideas, connecting things together, standing back and looking at the whole. I am fairly haphazard in both. I jump straight in. I either plan endlessly or don’t plan at all. I am wild with the scissors. I trim and snip until there is very little left. I make mistakes and end up with something I like even more.

I like that writing and crafting feel similar. Writing seems to feel less daunting if I approach it in a crafty frame of mind. It has always felt quite physical to me. I move words around the page to see where they fit best. Like planning a patchwork quilt, it takes a bit of rejigging to see where each word should go. Sometimes it feels like I am sewing ideas together. Other times it feels like I am patching up something old and giving it a second chance at a new purpose.

Writing is handmade. I don’t mean handwritten, I use a computer to write as much as anyone else. I mean, it’s created by the act of making. It’s brain to hands to output. You won’t have a hat or a quilted bedspread at the end of it but you will have something equally handmade.