Ep. 320: Building Days

Bookbinding

 

This was a daily building challenge where you were allowed to build anything you wanted for one month (one of the longest months: October, with 31 days). 

 

I, naturally, made mostly books. In fact, I believe I made 22 books.

I first ran across Building Days watching Evan Monsma’s YouTube channel at Evan Monsma where he said that October, for him, was a challenge he gave himself to build something every day. I took up the challenge and, except for three days when I had a debilitating cold, I made stuff. Twenty books and seven other products, including cleaning up a table, writing & mailing about 10 postcards, and uploading a couple of podcasts.

 

Almost every book I made used recyclable leftovers in my To Be Used Pile Hoard.

 

For example, the A6-sized book above on the left is called 24. It has 24 facts about 24 (James Dean died at age 24, as did Lee Harvey Oswald). It was made on October 24. The cover and endpapers are from the Hoard. It is about 100 pages of relatively new paper. 

 

The book in the middle was made of a used Amazon shipping envelope. It’s called The Amazon Notebook and contains facts about a river in South America, not about a major corporation that makes a billionaire richer. It is about 100 pages of relatively new paper. 

 

The book on the right, The Epson Screw-Up Notebook, has a brand-new cover, but the interior pages are recycled from printing errors made by a certain printer, which will remain nameless. It is about 100 pages of relatively new paper. 

 

I also made an A6-size blank notebook called The Starbuck Notebook with facts and figures about a certain whaling family based out of Nantucket, MA called Starbuck. They were the basis for the Starbuck character in Moby-Dick. Of all the facts and information about the Starbuck family in this notebook, not one of them deals with a certain coffee company. It was shipped off to a customer who enjoys coffee and notebooks. Except one: Why does Moby-Dick have a hyphen but Starbucks doesn’t have an apostrophe?

 

Most of the expense of making these books was tabulated in Time and glue. What did I learn making books almost everyday in October? First, that I can make a book in one day if I put my mind to it. Second, thinking about the book before delving in to make it is time well-spent. Third, it’s not impossible to do what you think is impossible if you concentrate not on social media, but life. 

 

Fiction

By the way, despite spending many an hour making books, I also wrote a little bit. I managed to improve and expand Growing Slurry (one of the books I made, and simultaneously made a big rookie mistake making it). I also edited and improved Caraculiambro. The rookie mistake I made was putting the text block in upside down (or the cover wrong side up). The kind of mistake I thought I was finished making, but evidently not. What I have not worked on much in the last month (October), was editing Molly Bright or The Nuns of Nanao, both of which are finished but need a good edit.  

Video 

A video of the books I made in October’s Building Days can be seen Here! Enjoy.