I've been trying to return to rituals in my work. Since I've had Rain Dragon, I've let a lot of things become rather slap-dash which is okay in some things (I've accepted it when it comes to, say, the state of the living room floor) but I think, for me, the act of writing and illustrating needs ritual--if only to cement in my mind that this is something of importance, that I must be considerate of.
One of the rituals I want to do with my writing, which I began with Starry River of the Sky is to print out the version-of-last-approval (basically the absolutely last time I can make changes), take a morning and read the entire thing out loud. Anyplace that I stumble or feels awkward, I mark and reconsider and, usually, change.
And it's almost time for me to do this for When the Sea Turned to Silver. To prepare, I decided to adapt my illustration tradition of making paper folders to this. I decided to make a custom decorate three-ring binder to hold my manuscript:
 |
| the decorative paper, the glue and a cardboard 3-ring binder (bought pre-made) |
I'm kind of envisioning the colors of the cover of the book to be like the paper I chose for the binder:
 |
| beautiful japanese paper with a wave motif! All glued and clipped together to dry smoothly! |
Now it's all ready to go:
I hope some of the beauty of the paper infuses into my writing! Wish me luck!!!