My Altered Book, Post-NaNoWriMo

Four Girls and Six Colleges; Altered Book Page

Sometimes I just like to write a book for fun, and usually it's for NaNoWriMo (aka National Novel Writing Month). No big deal, no serious thought of publication, but worth it's weight in writing practice and who knows? Maybe there are some characters, scenes, or settings that will be used one day--maybe even the majority of what I wrote. But while I'm at work on these "just for fun" books, I don't like to think about anything as daunting or real as editing, commonsense, or marketing. Instead, I just freewrite every wild and crazy thing that comes into my head and let the plot chips fall where they may.

For the last three NaNoWriMo years, three of these "for fun"manuscripts have turned into a  connected series, all based on the altered book project I started four (!) years ago and that I titled, Four Girls and Six Colleges. The title is derived from the actual book I'm altering, a collection of architectural drawings of six historic Australian college campuses. The four girls (featured above) who became the main characters of both the altered book and the 2012 NaNoWriMo manuscript, were amongst the first photos I pasted into the book. I was so intrigued with their stories that for NaNoWriMo 2013 I wrote Six Girls and Four Colleges (about their daughters), followed by last year's effort, Homecoming which featured their granddaughters.

But now that the manuscripts have been written and put away for a rainy day, it's time to get back to my original inspiration, the altered book itself. One of the reasons I'm still working on it is because when I embarked on the project I didn't realize that most people gesso or glue together several pages of their chosen book to make very thick single pages. After that it's fairly simple to collage, paint or enhance the resulting 12 or so backgrounds. In my case, however, I thought you were supposed to work on EVERY page--as in all 96 of them, back and front.

So here I am, several years later, still slogging away with the watercolor crayons and glue sticks. Some of the pages are pretty complete, maybe even finished; others have a long way to go. The good news is none of them are blank, as in, white-page-staring-me-in-the-face. Take a peek:

There are many, many more pages, LOL, but as they say, that's all for now, folks! Hope you enjoyed the show! As for me, it's back to the crayons and glue sticks. Sigh.

Tip of the Day: When's the last time you wrote or made something "just for fun"? If it's been a while, brainstorm a list of projects you'd love to try no matter the outcome. Pick one and start playing today! (P.S. Keep in mind that this is all about the sheer pleasure of personal creativity--you may want to take a page from my own experience and go for quick-and-easy rather than " 'till death do us part.")