Making Books

“What I loved to do was to read, to write, and to make books–really, if I was honest, to the exclusion of practically any other activity.”

Another quote from Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project got me thinking about making books. I keep meaning to make myself a hard copy of Paradise Fields. According to Rubin, it takes 20 minutes on Lulu. Feels these days like I really don’t have 20 minutes to spare. Maybe at spring break.

Been moving ahead on the other book project. Slowly. There’s this thing at my writing group where we write out a writing goal we want to meet in a month. You put in a buck and if you meet your goal, you win the pot. (If more than one person meets their goal, they draw names.) I never signed up for this before. The money is not huge, maybe $5 or $10 at the most. And I am good with self-imposed deadlines.

But this month, I thought, what the hell, and I wrote out: “Add 7000 words, finish revision.”

It was only after the meeting that I realized I’d have my spring break the week before our next meeting, which will help me meet my goals. Although I am working steadily, I have only added about 700 new words. I probably added more, but I took some other ones out. And so it goes.