Doing the Bug thing, book 2
/I promise I’m not going to do this with every single Bug book, but I thought I’d do a deep dive into the design/writing process with the second one, A Bug’s Nap, because it’s a baseline Lichtenbergianism lesson.
As with the first A Bug’s Lunch, I start with an ABORTIVE ATTEMPT, and since whatever I come up with has to fit into that 16-page format, I begin by taking two sheets of letter-sized paper, cutting them in half, folding them, etc etc, into a booklet.
I scribble the cover. (I did that for all four sequels just to make myself do the work.)
I number the pages, ignoring the fact that in a “real” book, page 1 is the recto page after the dedication page. Then I start scribbling.
And it immediately go sideways:
Notice how Bug’s evaluation of the nest is already marked to be moved to p.4 to spread out the potential napping spots. It also sets up the tree as a location.
But since I had already sketched in all the ideas I had in the rest of the booklet (ABORTIVE ATTEMPT), my original pp.4–5 now get scribbled over to pp.6–7.
And pp.7–8 get moved over as well.
As well as pp.8–9.
So what happened to the new pp.4–5? As I slap stuff down onto the paper, I’m already making decisions about pacing, topics, etc (GESTALT) so in the ABORTIVE ATTEMPT phase I will end up with blank pages that need material, thus my circling back and extending Bug’s trip up the tree trunk, shoving all the other pages over one spread (SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION).
Now, Dale, I hear you sniff, couldn’t you do this on 16 different pieces of paper and just shuffle them?
Yes, I could.
And couldn’t you do this in some software, even just as a word processing document?
Yes, I could.
But.
As a lot of research has shown in the last couple of decades, actually using pencil and paper (WASTE BOOKS) makes for better thinking and more flexible creativity. As I say in Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy,
“If you already have an app that works the way you do, then you should probably keep it. If you want to explore apps because you’re more at home with electronics than paper/pencil, then by all means do so. But the moment that you find yourself wishing you could do… whatever it might be that the app won’t do… then get yourself a physical Waste Book and see if your thought processes change along with the material format of your recording of them.” (p.41)
NEXT: I’d like to talk about the actual writing/construction of the book. And then: To Affinity and beyond!
PERSONAL NOTE TO AGENTS/PUBLISHERS: If any of this interests you, you’d be smart to get in touch with me soon, because I know as well as you do that 7”x8.5” is not a standard book size, and while I have experimented with making A Bug’s Lunch into a 7.5”x7.5” book, and it ain’t hard, the more of these you let me finish the harder it is going to make the process on me. In the meantime, it’s going to be print-at-home-able on legal-size paper.
