I’ve spent the last few days chained to my laptop copying and pasting most of my 195 blog posts (now plus one!) into a word document. Am I regretting my decision to make a book out of my blog? No, because it feels like it’s ticking a big box somewhere inside of me – it’s keeping my chimp happy – I’m making something that evidences the last two years. It will leave me free to experiment with something else.
That said, I have already reminded myself that I have never made a book before and so the process is very much an experiment, and that I should have no expectations as to the result.
I have formulated a plan though. The book is going to be in A5 format as that avoids the need to deal with things like columns. I’m going to print it in a series of booklets – signatures – of 5 sheets of A4 which equates to 20 pages. These will then be stitched together – I’m currently thinking no more than 10 in a single volume and then covered with a hardback cover. I am thinking that I may use some canvas that I have knocking around which I could paint, draw, print and stitch onto. Alternatively, I could try sheer fabric, cotton or linen. I’ll need to experiment. Even the end papers could be pieces in themselves.
I have already formatted and printed off a couple of signatures. It’s definitely going to run to more than a single volume, so I think that I’ll format and print off the first 10 signatures and make a single book just to see how it goes, rather than spending time formatting and printing out all of the blog.
Thus far the process has revealed a couple of things. Firstly, I need to be mindful that future posts will have to be included, so it may be an idea to limit posts going forward – but who am I kidding? Secondly, in carrying out the exercise I have relived the past two years and it has been helpful to note ideas that I have had along the way and which I could develop in the future, as well as discovering some draft posts which I didn’t publish, perhaps because I wasn’t quite ready. This is an example of part of one which was on the subject of perfectionism:
‘But old habits die hard and when my mother became ill I couldn’t process it on an emotional level and so I became the best carer that I could be, which now I regret because at times it meant that I wasn’t the best daughter that I could be. To this day I can’t understand why, when she said she fancied a gin and tonic, I told her that she couldn’t have it because she was taking morphine. She was dying, what did it matter? It is one of my biggest regrets. And when she didn’t eat one of the many offerings I had made for her, it was because I was a failure, because I wasn’t able to find that one thing that she would want to eat.
I had the same thought this evening as Monty, the dog, only had a few little bits of meat which he had been quite happily eating yesterday. What am I doing wrong? What is it that he wants that I’m not offering him?
And, of course, the answer is nothing. I can only do what I can do in the circumstances. If he was hungry he would eat. If my mother had been hungry she would have eaten what I had made for her. Even if they did eat, it’s not really enough to make any significant difference. I’m not responsible for them not eating. There is nothing that I can do on a practical level anymore to avoid having to deal with the inevitable outcome. ‘
Kate McCalmont-Woods 
When my Mum was dying the doctor said she would benefit from a nutrient found in oily fish. I bought the full range of tinned fish from Sainsbury’s and kept then in my boot for the next time I visited. The next time was the day they called to say she had deteriorated. She never ate the fish and I felt like it was my fault and for the sake of a quicker delivery of the sardines she may have survived. I kept the fish in my boot as penance, even though I knew it wouldn’t have helped. Big love x
LikeLike