Never Not Learning

That's the state of things here: perpetual learning. Writing is a discovery process, and some of my best writing moments have some in the place of pleasant unexpected surprises, when a character reveals themselves or a plot point unfolds unplanned, and we're off and romping after the next energy of the story. It's certainly possible for me to plan a story to death, and it's my nature to adhere rigidly to a plan if I've made on. Writing demands more flexibility, though, and I like the experience of that flex, the bending of rules and the discovery of the unexpected that comes from the bending.

Book design is a whole other beast. I've tried my hand at covers, trying to keep both my limited budget and more limited skills in mind. They're good enough for what I need them to be. Book interiors are another world. I happen to have a copy of someone's self-published novel, which I won't name here, but it illustrates the expectations that we have as readers when we open a physical book. The subtleties of layout, fussing over margins (0.5 or 0.6?), words-per-line, running headers? It's a lot, and if that detail isn't put into the presentation, we as readers see it. I see it in this copy, and I'm embarrassed for the author.

Trying my hand at interior layout is opening my eyes to the books around me, and making me pay much closer attention to how they are constructed. Becoming a writer made me look at the assembly of plots and the revelation of details and the choreography of characters in a scene. Producing a book is requiring an entire new level of scrutiny, of detail management, and of organizing. I'm enjoying it, to a point, but it's a lot of eye-training to get things correct, and a lot of book-pulling from the shelf to see how someone else solved this issue.

Welcome to being an author, and the state of perpetual learning. 

🧩🦏