Ep. 281: How Many Mistakes Can I Make?

Bookbinding

How many mistakes can I make on one blank A6 notebook with 200 pages bound with perfect binding and still get a book I’m relatively pleased with? The short answer is: Lots!

• First and minor mistake: I counted 200 pages. I mistakenly assumed the book would have 200 pages. But I only counted sheets, not sides so it actually has 400! pages. Gads.

• Second visible mistake: The front book board and the back book board are not the same size. Off by a millimeter or two or half. But I can see it and the book doesn’t stand upright by itself.

• Third Really Big Mistake: The endpapers are Both! the wrong size and incorrectly attached. I attached the endpapers to the entire inside cover rather than leave a border. That made the part of the endpaper that attaches to the text block too big. Ugly even after I attempted to repair them.

But generally speaking I like the book. It has three different book covers on the front plus four attachments (Enjoy, a diagram, and kanji), and the spine is a book cloth from a previous book so it has part of the previous book’s title and part of my name on the front & back. And it’s a handy size, fits in the palm of my miniature hands.

Fiction

Exciting times in the writing factory! Working on My Year of Drinking Kanazawa I had a revelation and jumped on it. I completely rewrote the first story as it didn’t fit the structure of the other short stories. While working on it, I had an additional epiphany about two other stories and revised them. I believe I’m 90% through with the collection.

Two nexts on my agenda: ① I’ll finish off the last story which is longer and more convoluted than the others. ② I’ll let it fester for a while before looking at it again and try to improve it by eliminating Tell scenes with Show scenes and action verbs versus passive or boring verbs. And more descriptions of the weather in Kanazawa during the year.

Exciting times ahead!