As you've no doubt noticed, the book arts posts have been pretty slim around here of late. I promise to change that, soon. I wrote most of April's posts a month ahead of time, but have been doing May's very piece-meal, which means I've been writing what I know for the last month, the result of which is you get a lot of posts about writing, not so many about book arts.
The truth is, the book arts posts, though short, take a lot of time to research, if I want to make them interesting and substantive and not just repeat what everyone else is posting. So it involves combing through both numerous Google alerts, and my ever-growing list of blogs, something that can easily take most of the day, then writing the artist for permission to use an image, and learning more about them. This weekend (Memorial Day here in the States) I plan to spend some time in the evenings catching up on my reading and flagging stuff to write about. I'm equally backed up on my emails. But in addition, I have readings for my upcoming class to plan and syllabi to finish, and, and, and . . .
You get the idea.
This makes me feel a bit like Lewis Carroll's White Rabbit: "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!" Fortunately, most of the book arts stuff I tend to write about isn't time sensitive. I just have to sound like I know what I'm talking about. You know, it's said that the best way to know something is to have to teach it, and it's true. I'm continually getting a good education in book arts and techniques by writing about it here.
"So remember what the Dormouse said: 'Feed your head! Feed your head!'"
Ann, why apologize for what you're writing or not writing? You could write about doing the dishes or taking out the garbage and your faithful readers would be enthralled by your prose. Just write about what's going on; we like reading about the texture of your life, whatever it may be.
Posted by: Robert Kellerman | May 26, 2008 at 08:38 AM