On how we never know what will work ...

There are people (I hear) who use blogs for promotion. As you can probably tell by the frequency and tone of mine, that's never really been the point for me. When you get down to the bare bones, I'm not really sure why I blog. I know I have a few lovely friends out there in the world who read me (you know who you are, right?) but I've never sought to bulk up my followers list, or getting insanely rich from my creative endeavours (as if!). But despite my lack of any dedicated action in that direction, I seem to have stumbled into print lately, and I thought some of you might like to know ...

Mr. B., who is naturally cynical, is wary of situations where someone (particularly someone who doesn't actually *know* you) appears to be doing something to "make you famous". His main criteria is whether or not you PAY to be published. He therefore does not count any of my contributions to The Sketchbook Project, where I paid a fee to have my books digitized and posted online. He's right, of course. I could've literally stomped on each page with a muddy boot, send them the money and *voila!* ~ famous online!

I would argue (in my favour) that I *could* have done that ... but didn't. Each Sketchbook Project book was patiently created by hand (twice ~ since I always make one for myself), and with perhaps a little reservation about this year's book (not my best), I'm pretty pleased with the results. And (as much for my own convenience as anyone else's) here's the list:

Time Traveller, Builder of Bridges, The Science of Story, today i am inspired by ..., and lastly, this year's contribution: the sum of one's parts. If I'm a little less pleased with this year's effort, it's only because I was *so* going in a different direction when I started, and had to start again when my first *genius* idea hit a fork in the creative road. I know I will get back to it when I figure out how to bring it to fruition. All I can say is watch this space ... eventually.

So, apart from paying to be famous (can you say vanity press?), there are the other kinds of being published, and I've been lucky enough to have two (2!) recent appearances in bona fide actual published books that other people can buy on Amazon (surely, Mr. B., *this* qualifies!).

The first is:
Art Journal Kickstarter
Edited by Kristy Conlin

One of my favourite journal spreads  from La Musee d'une Vie Inventee appears on page 20.

As it's one of my favourites, it'll be no surprise to find I've already talked about here on the blog:

My second appearance is:
A World of Art Journal Pages
Edited by Dawn DeVries Sokol

I've got two pages in this one on page 42, (or maybe a double spread counts as three?). One of them again a favourite. The other not so much. Not that I don't like it (I do), but of all the pages I submitted, I didn't think it was the best, or even one of the best ~ I threw it in for variety! Which leads me to my point: it's really hard to know what other people will like.

And if you don't know what other people will like, there's really no point in trying to please other people artwise. The best thing to do is what *you* like, and if you keep doing what you love often enough, eventually you'll get mad skills, have gobs of followers and be made insanely rich as everyone clamours to publish you everywhere. The last part of that sentence was a test, by the way ... all you really want are mad skills and to be able to do what you love. Well ... that's all I really want. You can want fame and fortune, too ...  if you like. Wink.

And a big shout out to all those folks I know who also appear in these books ... a surprisingly long list of  dear friends, people I've taken art classes with and people I've been taught art by.  I never imagined we'd be in print together ... my dreams are humble. I'm sure Mr. B would approve.

Looking back at our shadow selves ...

Today's post is a page from the Time Traveler book I contributed to the Sketchbook Project back in 2012. I was thinking the other day about how long an idea can stay with you before it finally surfaces in the form of art and/or writing.

The first time I thought about shadow selves was about 30 years ago ... my 22-year-old self was having lunch with a group of friends in a hotel restaurant in the town I grew up in, but where I hadn't lived since I was 12. We'd driven 125 miles, from the town we all currently lived in, to consider renting a house together in this new location, and I hadn't told anyone that I'd once lived here.

Through the restaurant window I could see the elementary school my 8-year-old self had attended. Since it was lunch time, the school field was alive with active, noisy children playing games that probably hadn't changed much since I'd been out on that field myself. It was like looking back in time, and what came to mind was a particular sports day when (not being athletic) my 8-year-old self volunteered to help the teachers organizing and handing out ribbons and water and bandaids. I remembered the day very well, and at lunch time on that day, I'd been sitting at a table putting ribbons in order, facing the very restaurant my 22-year-old self would someday be sitting in.

And if that wasn't odd enough, my 12-year-old self had taken music lessons in one of the hotel meeting rooms, so now there were three of my shadow selves, all within easy reach of each other. Even at 22, my awareness of this overlapping of shadow selves made an impression on me.

The second time I thought about shadow selves was while traveling in New Brunswick in my mid-30's. I'd made a trip back east to meet my parents' families, and at one point was traveling by bus from one small town to another. I was dropped off at the pickup point (a gas station) to wait for a bus that might be along in anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour. It was a pleasant sunny day, and the gas station had provided a comfy, sheltered bench outside for waiting passengers. I did what I always do in times like these ~ I took out my journal. I started writing about the people and places I'd seen so far, and a half hour later the bus came and I got on board. If there's one thing I learned 'back east', it's that hurry is not in the vocabulary. The bus was not in a hurry to get on the road ~ we were there for at least another half hour. In that time, other people arrived and boarded, and I continued writing. From my seat in the bus I could see the bench I'd been waiting on, and I saw myself there, on the bench writing, and I was now, on the bus writing. I was thinking how unlikely it was that I was there at all (so far from home in BC) about how insubstantial all these past selves are, and since I was writing, I wrote about it, mentioning not only that current experience, but looking back on my 22-year-old awareness of it as well.

Fast forward another 20 years, and in my journal I'm making page after page of notes for the Time Traveler project, realizing we all travel in time, we just do it one day at a time. And in every second we leave ghost imprints of ourselves wherever we go. I was thinking about this: where are we most solid and what does this tell us about ourselves? What can we learn from where my shadow selves have been? Can we go back there and relive our experiences in other times? Of course we can ...

Science Fiction at the British Library ... ooooh, aaaaah

Anyone who knows me knows I love science fiction. Wait, let me qualify that ... I love "good" science fiction. If I were a librarian (and who hasn't wanted to be a librarian at some point in their life, I ask?), the science fiction section of libraries would be a whole lot smaller. It seems to me there's a whole bunch of stuff (we're being polite here) that very clearly *isn't* SF that's put there because they didn't know what the heck to do with it otherwise. And don't get me started on Fantasy ... um, yeah, like SO not Science Fiction.

On previous trips to England I've relied heavily on buying a copy of Time Out magazine on my way out of Heathrow Airport (oooh, place name dropping!). This year, I chose to do my pre-trip planning from the comfort of my own home, by checking out all the usual museums, etc. online first.

I got *really* excited when I saw that the British Library was hosting an exhibit called: "Out of This World : Science Fiction, But Not As You Know It". As a person who's read quite a lot of SF, particularly the classics, I wasn't expecting to see a bunch of "new" stuff ~ but (of course) I did. I spent some of my precious time writing down titles that needed to be checked out in the future (no pun intended), but at a certain point gave up and decided to buy the exhibit guidebook ~ which contained not only a complete list, but grouped them by theme and is profusely articled and illustrated.

Years ago when I was an obstreperous teenager, I remember arguing with my Dad about the merit of SF ~ he didn't see the point of it. I may have won that argument, he started reading SF after that. For me, SF has almost always been about the "big questions" ~ why are we here, what would the present look like if the past had been different, and what will the future look like if we make different choices now? As I see it, one of the tools of SF is that it lets you isolate one aspect of human existence and spin it out into the grand "what if?". Because in the end, however well the writers write, they are still human writers writing human stories for human readers, and I think the best of the best of the SF I've read over my life has made me a better human. And I continue to read SF ~ apart from the exhibit guidebook, most of the books I bought while in England were SF, and classics to boot ~ including one that's eluded me for years, but the how and when of buying it is an interesting story for another day ...