THE EUPHORIA OF RELIEF

Originally posted on August 25th, 2006

The new book is done! It’s official. I picked up two bound copies today. Alice did a fantastic job making beautiful books out of two stacks of printouts. Her attention to detail is just wonderful. The headband alone made my day. It’s one of those lovely, lovely minutiae that make an object start hovering two inches off the ground.

As a finishing touch Alice helped me apply the shiny, oversized, two-sided dustjackets, printed out as a kind favor by my friends at Typecraft right here in Pasadena just last night. (My thanks to David, Andrew and J.J.)

So now the book is done and it looks very, very cool! It’s funny how you can stare at a set of artwork for four months, make every printout, plan every detail, and still be completely surprised by the final assembled piece. It’s one of the great pleasures of this job. In other words: I love it when a plan comes together.

Add to that the euphoria of relief: I actually finished a big personal project without an external deadline and it came out as well as I had hoped. I didn’t leave the thing half finished and put it on the shelf (as I have shamefully done with other projects in the past). NO! I got it done and it’s a good piece and that’s a huge load of my mind. I did my job!

Now comes the fun part: I get to start showing the book around to publishers. And then… then I get to show it to you.

When I walked out of Alice’s workshop with my two perfect little books today I felt a huge wave of bouncy, nervous energy: I wanted to show this project off right now! After four months of patient work it suddenly felt incredibly, physically urgent to present the thing. But that’s not how it works. I won’t count my chickens before they hatch. Must. Get. Book. Deal. First. Then I’ll show you the book in all its shiny glory. (And all the merchandising goodies I comped up, too.) For now: more teasers. Yes, it’s true: I’m a book tease, but please do remember: 344 LOVES YOU