Since October, I've been working on a new book, a book that I'd like to self publish by the spring. This solo venture, is based on a couple challenges I've done over the past couple of years, the 15 for 30 Challenge and the Big Idea Challenge, and I've had the idea of packing a book full of such challenges.
We could all use a creative nudge every now and then, especially when we seem to have run out of ideas. We can easily become creatively blocked, and it’s during those times when we could use a little jolt to get the creative juices flowing again. This book will be full of such creative nudges and sparks, and I'm envisioning a book of 365 challenges, a year's worth. Readers will be able to use it everyday, or they'll be able to turn to random challenges when they need a nudge. Some people have criticized Journal Fodder 365 for not having 365 prompts, and in a way I wanted to answer those critiques with this new book.
It took some effort to brainstorm and develop 365 distinct ideas for challenges, and I found that I had to get very specific in order to come up with them all - 365 ideas is truly a lot of ideas. There are challenges with materials, ideas, tools, and techniques, and I've tried to spread them randomly throughout the book so that there is consistently a good mix.
The biggest challenge for me is design. Since my plan is to self publish the book, I need to design it myself, or pay someone else to design it. I'm an artist, but not a graphic designer. It's a challenge to use the software, but I think that I'm getting it figured out. I've written more than a third of the challenges, and I've begun playing around with the page design for the challenges. I'm thinking that the book will be 144 pages with three challenges per page, and I mocked up the first page of challenges just to get an idea of what the pages might look like (See the image above).
This is by no means the final design for the pages, and I'm certain that things will change drastically over the next couple of months. But it helps me to visualize the book.
I just wanted to give you a sneak peek into what I've been doing. I hope that I can pull it all together by spring.