Get Excited and Make Things!

Get_excited_and_make_things

My friend Ariana works with Warren Ellis to make all kinds of really cool things. Lately, they've been experimenting with print on demand technology to take creative risks that simple economics would have rendered impossible as recently as five years ago.

For example, three weeks ago, they started putting out a T-shirt of the Week at CafePress. It's a great idea: they put up a design on Sunday, it's available for a week, and then it goes off to the land of wind and ghosts to make room for something new. If you like the design, you grab it (possibly enjoying that you're part of a limited edition), and if you don't like the design, you just wait a week and try again.

Warren says: "TOTW is basically a joke that Ariana and I pull each week in our joint guise as the International Electrophonic Unit. Basically, we take some of the stupider things I’ve said on Twitter and elsewhere, often in a state of extreme alcoholic refreshment or severe sleep deprivation, and put them on a t-shirt. Ariana set up a Cafe Press store (because this is a joke and engaging with a serious maker of t-shirts would be less funny to us), and… well, once a week, here we are."

As a creator and as a consumer, I think this is awesome. The only thing Warren and Ariana are actually investing – that is, the only risk they're taking - is the time it takes to create the design, and if you're a creative person who, uh, enjoys creating, that's not really a risk as much as it's a chance to play with your toys and possibly make a little money while you do it.

This is incredibly inspiring to me, and I hope that it's just as inspiring to indie artists everywhere. Why not take a creative risk and see if it works out? Unlike the old days, when we had to purchase a lot of stock ahead of time and hope we could sell it, we can just Get Excited and Make Things, knowing that the very worst that can happen is that nobody likes that thing we made as much as we thought they would.

In the old days, creators had to hope that:

1. A store would carry their Thing.

2. Once in the store, their Thing would be in a place where people could see it.

3. People would buy their Thing.

4. People would buy enough of their Thing to get the cycle to start over at step 1.

Oh, and to have any hope of being successful, they have to do this in different stores all over the place, competing for space and attention with huge companies that have massive advertising budgets. It was, to say the very least, daunting.

But look at how much things have changed! Creative people can get excited, make something, and get it to their customers without ever having to go through any of those steps. The financial risk has been almost entirely taken away, so now we can take chances on our really crazy ideas, just because we're excited about them.

For example, when my episode of Criminal Minds was going to air, I got excited and made an audio version of the production diary from Sunken Treasure. The time elapsed from the moment I got excited until the moment I had an actual thing was about five hours. Now, it's hasn't exactly sold like crazy – only 242 total sales – and if I'd invested in actual product instead of doing it POD, I would have lost money on it for sure … but I spent half a day making something that has gotten great feedback from the people who listened to it, and I earned about nine hundred dollars for my trouble. Clearly, it's not a sustainable full-time business model, but it was certainly as successful as I could hope one of my Crazy Ideas would be.

If this sounds even remotely interesting or inspiring to you, I encourage you to read three posts Ariana has recently written on her blog about her experiences with POD:

TOTW: Three Weeks On

Will tomorrow’s design be niftier?  Who knows?  I’m taking the opportunity that a weekly project affords to try and up my game each time… but whether you like the next (or the next, or the next) better is, well, it’s all a bit like Let’s Make A Deal,isn’t it? Only instead of fabulous prizes and curtains named Door #4, it’s fabulous bits of silly on whatever clothing options we’ve decided to offer this week.  But the basic premise stands: Either you decide this week’s is the design you want… or its gone and that’s that.

[…]

with POD, there’s really no “…while supplies last!” either.  That’s brilliant, too, of course — a huge part of putting Shivering Sands on Lulu is just that: it can stay there as long as Lulu does, still pulling in a sale or two in ten years.

But, although I’m not advocating a fake or forced sense of urgency — because that’s a bit cheap, and more than a bit insulting to folks’ intelligence — there is something to be said about exploring how some online and POD systems do lend themselves to Being An Event.

It was Warren that first brought my attention to the concept of Event Internet (although he calls it “Appointment,” but I don’t love those so I’ve renamed for comfort), so I’m riffing off his playbook, here.  But he’s certainly not the only person playing with the idea.  There’s the well-documented Twitter-Flash-Mobbery that Amanda Palmer’s been pushing for a while, or Eliza Gauger’s Sweatshops, for instance.  Hell, just a few minutes ago, Wil sent me a link to this, saying: “It redraws random fractals every few seconds. You can’t save them, so you just appreciate them and then wait for the new one to show up.”  Which isn’t precisely an “event,” I suppose, but it sums up the idea rather nicely: You can’t save everything — although you can often record the live event to watch later — but sometimes, some things, even online, are about this moment.  And when they’re gone, you missed it.

So what the hell could that possibly have to do with Print On Demand which, as I just said, is so great because it just stays there forever?  Well, it’s all about looking at the tools in your kit and thinking about new ways to use them. 

In response to the inevitable cries of "but this only works for people like Warren Ellis because he's Warren Ellis" she wrote POD: If you're not Warren Ellis, which I can't really excerpt here, because it needs to be read in context. To sum up: before he was Warren Ellis, not even Warren Ellis was Warren Ellis. Stop crying about how you're not Warren Ellis, be who you are, and take that energy you're pouring into feeling sorry for yourself into getting excited and making something.

Finally, she wrote POD: Let's back up a bit here, which I think is the most inspiring of the three. You need to read the whole thing, but I'll pull a bit for you:

Here’s what you need to do, right now, tonight.  No, NOT tomorrow morning, or this weekend, or once your work rush has let off a little, or after the holidays, or sometime in the New Year: Right. Fucking. Now. 

Decide what you want to make.

And I’m talking about the single most complicated and ridiculous creation you can think of…

NO STOP IT I DIDN’T SAY HOW or WHY or WHEN, I only said WHAT.

[…]

I SAID STOP THINKING ABOUT THE HOW OR THE LOGISTICS OR THE MONEY OR THE TIME.  STOP IT.

This moment, right now, this THING that you’re deciding to make, this thing exists independently of the fiddly bits for now.  This, what you’re doing here, is something that back in the olden days, before the slagosphere wasted all your time telling you how not to do things they called a goal.  It’s a beautiful and magical thing that doesn’t need money or time or effort to believe in.  It’s only different from a dream in that you made it yourself, instead of letting your subconscious do all the work while you sleep.

Now, okay, here’s the little-bit harder step, are you ready?

Look at that THING you just said you wanted to make.  Really look at it.  Now, right now, tonight, NOT tomorrow morning, or this weekend, or once your work rush has let off a little, or after the holidays, or sometime in the New Year: Right. Fucking. Now.

DECIDE WHETHER YOU’RE GOING TO DO IT, OR NOT.

Period.  This is it.  You’ve been putting it off, or you’ve been planning to get around to it, or you know that once you get a little spare time it’s at the top of the list… for HOW long now?  I’m looking at you.  I know you’re already taking a breath to rattle off the list of all the things standing in your way.  and what’s more, I know you know they’re just excuses.

And it needs to end, now.  Your life is never going to GET less stressful.  It’s honestly not.  That’s not how life works.  When we put off the things we want to do, the stress of that adds into the stress of life.  You’re not going to GET more hours in the day.  You’re never going to have enough money to put aside spare time.  You’re not going to suddenly have That Moment where it all gels and you suddenly break out and start doing what you want to be doing… unless you MAKE that moment, right here, right now.

I'm not suggesting your quit your job and napalm the bridge behind you as you drive out of the parking lot, because not everyone is going to be able to do this and make a living from it … but that's not really the point, here. The point is to encourage those of you (us) who have been unable or unwilling to take the chance and just create something, already, to get out there and do it.

I once saw a poster or a paperweight or something that said, "What would you do if you knew you could not fail?" Think about that for a second. What thing do you want to make? What story do you want to tell? What song do you want to sing?

We can take these great creative risks now, because we really can't fail, not in the traditional monetary sense. Sure, we could be out a lot of time, but even that time isn't entirely wasted, as I hope to illustrate with two examples of my own: 

1. I spent days putting together a little book that I thought would be awesome, only to discover that there was absolutely no way to make it affordable for me or you. I was disappointed that I spent all that time, but it was incredibly fun while I did it, and maybe I have a script for a show now, instead of a book.

2. I worked really hard to write a story that ultimately wasn't really finished, as much as it was let go. I spent a lot of time after I was supposed to be done with it, trying to figure out how I could fix it so I could publish it, before reaching the very upsetting conclusion that it just can't be fixed. I talked about this with some friends who are writers, and told them how I felt like the whole thing was a waste of time and that all I got out of the experience was the knowledge that I need to do a whole lot of grinding before I level up as a writer. One of my friends, an incredibly talented and accomplished writer, told me, "Every project you finish levels you up as a writer." While I was (and am) still disappointed at what I believe was a failed project, I can't disagree with my friend. I gained Writer XP, even if I didn't gain a great story that I can feel good about publishing and selling.

So what are you waiting for? Do or do not. There is no Try. Whether it's an Etsy store, or a book with Lulu, or a T-shirt or a mug or a clock or a fucking teddy bear in a sweater from CafePresssingle  … hell, if it's a photograph you put on Flickr or a podcast you host on Archive.org, or a story that you write for Ficly or your own blog, just do it! Go get excited and make things, and when you're done, come back here and link us to what you did.

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156 thoughts on “Get Excited and Make Things!”

  1. couldn’t agree more about the WH40k universe…Back in the day, i thought it was one of the most well thought out stories to base a game around…so incredibly rich in detail and myth etc….so dude, you’re not alone 🙂

  3. I had actually initiated a plan to make something (physically) a few hours ago when I texted a friend of mine who’s rather handy and has a lot of tools about a project I want to try to make happen this weekend.
    It’s not quite the same as what you’re talking about, in that it’s not something I’d plan to try to sell or anything, but I plan to build a riser for my TV so I can put a speaker underneath it. A modest project to be sure, but it should be fun to work on with my friend and, if it works out well I may put the plans and such on the internet for others to follow (all of the similar products I’ve seen for sale are SUPER expensive for what they are, so perhaps if it’s really easy I can save some people some money!). Hmmm… ok maybe it is more related to what you’re talking about than I thought. When it’s done and I have pictures and such I’ll link to it here.
    Meanwhile here’s a link older project I put together a while ago. to help declutter my desk (the project is in need of some updating now that I have some new equipment actually…). http://droct.vox.com/library/post/decluttering-my-desk.html

  9. Thanks so much for posting this! I can always use more motivation. This year I actually got my calendar designs together in time to sell them before the holidays instead of *right* before. http://www.annearchist.com/ And just hours ago, I got an email from my library offering me both of their front display windows in January to showcase my work. They don’t just want my photography prints, they want the photo jewelry, the calendars, and a shirt. That should keep me making things for a while. http://annearchist.deviantart.com/

  10. I agree as well. If I go for more than a day or so without creating something, even something small, I feel like an addict without their drug of choice. After a while you become addicted to making/design/creating something.
    I have a couple of addicting hobbies:
    I write poetry which can be seen at Once Upon A Time http://creativepride.net/onceuponatime/
    I make chainmail and beaded jewelry which can be seen at Creative Pride Jewelry http://zaubrer.etsy.com
    And my latest obsession is Metaplace. My town square can be found at http://metaplace.com/Zaubrers_World/play (You have to sign up for an account to see Mytilias Square, but it is free.)

  12. Thank you so much Wil for the awesome, inspiring post. We are gearing up to put out our first Brax book and we’re most likely going to do it with Lulu. Have you had any experience with CreateSpace? It sounds like you’re definitely a Lulu guy and sometime I would would like to hear what brought you to that decision.
    Man! Look at all the cool links in the comments. I could spend all day just looking through this stuff!

  16. A superb post, thank you, and the comments are so full of win that I’m going to be immersing myself in other people’s creativity for weeks to come.
    My own little space is at http://dkplewis.blogspot.com, but I need to take this post to heart and update it more often.
    I do have something coming up next week and I think I’ll try some crazy ideas with it. After being inspired by “Blue Light Special” and thinking about why exactly I spent a day helping to build a life-size Lego house, I wrote my very first piece of narrative non-fiction and I’ll be performing it next week (any tips on that area would be *very* greatly appreciated!). Following this post, I think I might very well put a performance of it on YouTube; I was going to rehearse using my webcam anyway, so why not?
    Thanks again for a great post.

  17. I have been following your blog for a long time, and now I have a blog of my own. Now if life would send me a DO SOMETHING reminder everyday, I might get something done 🙂

  19. Thanks Wil. . My friend and I make herbal tea blends and you have inspired me to re-launch our etsy store. We have both gotten so busy at our boring day jobs that we have let our creative outlet suffer from neglect.

  20. @wilw
    BUGREPORT:
    hi wil, it seems like all i ever do when i comment is bitch abt stuff, make off-colour jokes, or spam things i’m fond of…
    the link you put @ “…she wrote [POD: If you’re not Warren Ellis], which I can’t really…” is not working for me; it reads as “http:///”; that’s after testing on two different web browsers.
    i just skimmed through the whole comments list & nobody seems to have caught it as of …now. (sry if i missed anything!) thought you might want to know.
    since i’m nagging u a lot, over a very brief time commenting here; i just want you to know, i love you man!
    your underwear scene in “stand by me” was AWESOME! & the only thing i didn’t like abt wesley crusher was that he didn’t show nearly enough skin; they should have found a way to write in scenes where he was wearing ONLY a sweater, & then took it off… i really feel it would have increased the character’s popularity tremendously! ^__^
    (feel free to delete this comment, if it’s not good for at least minimum lol-age; the main purpose was to let you know about the link problem, & nag you for that)
    bye wil

  21. Cheers! What a great compilation of inspiring words! My humble contribution is the following:
    http://starwarsvsstartrek.com/
    A couple buddies of mine and I just started a blog as a tongue-in-cheek debate in the spirit of the unending “Which is better, Star Wars or Star Trek?” battle. Rather than comparing technical minutia like which space ships’ shields can dissipate more energy, we prefer to create a collaborative argument about things like whether Riker could seduce Leia before Han Solo could take Kirk in a fistfight. It’s fun to write for and hopefully fun to read as well.
    We’re lucky to have all these inspiring words and incredible resources while our blog is so young… it’s a great reminder about how wide open the door is before us.

  22. copyedit; editing time ran out (i hate that feature), so take #2:
    @wilw
    BUGREPORT:
    hi wil, it seems like all i ever do when i comment is bitch about stuff, make off-colour jokes, or spam things i’m fond of…
    apropos:
    the link you put @ “…she wrote [POD: If you’re not Warren Ellis], which I can’t really…” is not working for me. it reads as “http:///”; that’s after testing it on 2 different web browsers.
    i just skimmed through the whole comments list & nobody seems to have caught the problem as of ….now (sry if i missed it somewhere in previous comments); thought you might want to know.
    since i’m nagging you a lot, over a very brief time commenting here; i just want you to know, i love you man! ^__^
    your underwear scene in “stand by me” was AWESOME! & the only thing i didn’t like abt wesley crusher was that he didn’t show nearly enough skin! they should have found a way to write in scenes where he was wearing ONLY a sweater, & then took the sweater off… i really feel it would have increased the character’s popularity tremendously.
    (feel free to delete this comment (& the previous draft even more so), if it’s not good for at least minimum lol-age; the main purpose was to let you know about the link problem, & to bitch @ you about it)
    bye wil

  25. I love this post! I had a similar revelation last year after I quit a particularly stressful and soul destroying job. Now I am an independant artist (a dream I had given up on a long time ago). I make robots from cardboard and paper mache, amongst other wierd and wonderful things. Although I’m barely earning enough to pay the bills, I’ve never been so content in my life.
    It’s great to read that so many other people are doing the same and becoming so successful. Good luck to all!

  26. Haven’t had time to read all the comments, but will soon. Wil, thanks for this very inspirational post. You were kind enough a few years back to use the title of one of my band’s songs as the title for your blog post (52 Seaview). I’ve been in the same original band, The Wag (don’t ask) for more than 11 years; if that isn’t creating something, I don’t know what is! 🙂 Here’s the link to our website (which will look quite different when we release our next CD, around Christmas):
    http://www.thewagband.com
    Also, I have a Flickr page, and I’m particularly fond of my New Zealand & Australia photos. You can find my photos here:
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/loriengreenleaf/
    I’d love to hear what anyone/everyone thinks about my band & my photos.
    -Alicia (@AliciaWag)

  27. Don’t know why my band website doesn’t show up as a link…? In case you only feel like clicking, not copying & pasting, I’m trying again:
    http://www.thewagband.com
    I hope it works this time… if not, please copy & paste! My band can use all the support it can get (read: buy our CDs so I can eat, LOL)
    -Alicia (@AliciaWag)

  28. Doing Friday Knights, and being in Nursing school has stopped me from working on a more girly, Dark Shadows-ish, silly comic… Monster Mashing. I work on FK with my husband and our friend who are both guys so they sorta don’t want to go to as girly a place as I’d like to go sometimes.
    I decided in October I’d just do it in pencil and post one panel a day. That way I could have fun, make it up as I go and be as girly as I want. I could as you have said here, GET EXCITED AND MAKE IT… without seriousness and only costing for the domain. I love the internet.

  29. Thank you for a topic that is both inspiring and near to my heart right now. This September I finally quit procrastinating and started making things again–and amusingly enough, I can trace the motivation back to the moment at PAX that I decided you were cool.
    I dusted off my guitar and am now teaching myself to play the cello. I spend all my free time practicing songs to post to Youtube for nothing other than my own gratification. I am ridiculously happy. Maybe this new burst of inspiration will get the rest of my projects off the ground.

  30. Hey Wil, just wanted to say a big thanks for the post today. I attend a weekly writing class on Wednesdays and I wasn’t able to get my assignment completed. I had been toying with an idea but it seemed to off the wall to execute. I read your post and felt inspired. 20 minutes later I had an assignment completed and everyone loved it.
    Thanks, you inspired me and I managed to make a total writing save.

  32. Man, that’s great stuff! As for me, I got inspired by Jonathan Coulton’s “Thing A Week” and decided my big November project should be to finish at least *four* new songs – one per week – and put them on YouTube. So far I’m on track. The first is a folksy sort of thing called “missing piece of you” and the second is a rocking political sort of thing called “Everybody’s just people”. Both are here:
    http://www.youtube.com/user/glenra
    What I’m finding is that a *series* of creative works is a lot easier to do well than I’d hsve guessed by extrapolating from the difficulty of doing just one. Why? (1) getting motivated to *keep going* is easier than getting motivated to *start* – momentum comes into play; (2) there’s a lot of technical stuff to get right – if you can look at piece #1 and do things slightly better for #2 and so on, eventually you’ll really have something; (3) While working on one piece, you tend to get ideas you can’t quite use then which end up forming the basis for the next piece.

  33. Thanks for the buttkicking! 😀 I went right out and started looking for webcomic freeware to get my butt to working on things. XD

  34. WOW! I more than needed that!
    I signed up to do NaNoWriMo. I felt the need to write something that told my son’s story (http://www.prayforaidan.com) as a novel. I did a little over 1000 words then fell flat. Now, I’m feeling the sincere need to spend parts of my upcoming 3-day weekend getting back to completing my 50K word count.
    I have also forwarded this post to my wife. She makes cards and handmade gifts and just recently worked up a partnership with a photographer in the area. She hasn’t taken any classes in graphic design or photography, but she does an excellent job. You can see some of her stuff at http://from-the-heart-stationery.blogspot.com. She, too, has talked about taking our son’s story and making it into a book. My NaNoWriMo project may turn into a joint venture as a result.
    As for me, I have several other creative ideas in mind, including some short stories and even a screenplay based on a book written by my birth uncle many years ago. I think the time has come to start finding a few spare hours a day to work on those things.
    I’m have a question to those of you who have young kids and work: How do you balance time between work, kids, the spouse, writing, and “personal time” without causing massive turmoil?

  35. It’s been almost a year ago I decided to make a book. I was looking at an offer from a famous self-help guru to be in a book with him for multiple thousands of dollars, and I’d seen other ones he’d produced, and they were not good. So I thought, I can do better, and I grabbed some friends and we made one! It really rocks. So, even if it turns out that your project will take a year, or three, I’m here to say that it can be done. In fact, it might even be more satisfying to defeat a one-year monster level book than a one-week monster level book. The leveling up in writer XP is awesome!
    Anna

  36. Couldn’t agree more. About 6 years ago I started dreaming about doing voice acting. I took an intro seminar at a local theatre and listened to the instructor tell us how difficult it was, and that to do animation work, which was ultimately my goal, I’d have to move to California and basically leave everything & even then most likely fail. So, I stuck that dream in a drawer & took it out every once in a while to look at how pretty & shiny it was, only to stick it back in the drawer again because of all those “obstacles” in my way.
    Then Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture started making the rounds & it was getting harder to stuff that dream back in its drawer. Fast forward to 6 months ago. I found a local acting studio that taught VO classes for adults. After a relatively small monetary investment to record a demo, and a decent amount of time and practice, I now have a demo mp3 and an agent here in town. It’s not happening overnight, but I don’t think I want it to.
    Even though I’m still technically an “aspiring” voice actor until I actually book my first gig, I do consider myself an actor, and it’s thanks to just getting off my butt, and taking a leap into actually DOING what I want to do & not making any more excuses for NOT doing it.

  37. You know Wil, a year ago I would have said this was crazy talk. But in May, after years of grinding on different designs, me and two buddies got together and published a game. We just said “you know what, this is good stuff. Other people will like this. Lets make it.” And we did. And it wasn’t near as costly as I thought. And now we’ve sold enough that it didn’t actually cost us money to make it.
    w00t!
    The hardest part of getting it done is making yourself get it done.

  39. Another NaNo-er here who is VERY far behind, but determined not to give up. It’s funny that now I have not one, but two writing motivational moments I can attribute to you, Wil.
    In October, I went back and forth on what to write. I had no plot yet, and everything I could think of was already done by someone better. But then I remembered an interview you did last year when you mentioned the awesome advice you got from Ed Brubaker. It doesn’t matter if that idea has been done before, just write your story.
    How many different zombie movies are there? Gangster movies? War movies? Westerns? Each of those are basically the same plot within their genre (one could argue that even though the setting may change, it is still the same story. See Firefly – a western in space) So it doesn’t matter if you’re writing something that’s been done. It’s YOUR story, told in YOUR voice. Just keep writing!

  40. I’m able to write at work somewhat. Not long chunks of time, but even a spurt of 15 – 20 min can get a couple of hundred.
    As for ‘personal time’, I’m using November’s personal time to write. Well, most of it. Do you watch TV with your wife in the evening? Write while you do. That’s been a big help, since if I don’t get time at work, then I only have a couple of hours at most in the evening between kid’s bed and mine.
    The biggest thing I see in your comment is don’t look at having to carve hours out at a time. You’ll never get started that way. Instead start with a smaller time period, say 30 min or an hour, and stick to that. Then go spend time with the kids or wife. Or if you can, get up that much earlier in the morning. You’ll find that if you sneak in small chunks of time here and there, you’ll start to notice progress.
    Good luck!

  41. Just over a year ago I helped start a podcast called Bad Philosophy. It’s a number of non experts (with the occasional expert guest) talking about philosophy or anything else that comes up.
    In conjunction with the show we also started making t-shirts with my face on them, because I occasionally bear a striking resemblance to Che Guevara.
    http://www.badPhilosophy.com/blog (for the podcast)
    http://www.zazzle.com/badPhilosophy (for the shirts and other stuff)

  42. Wow…I needed that ass-chewing. I created an etsy shop a while back but have recently let it get stagnate. So I need to ‘Get Excited AGAIN and Make MORE Things’…and then ‘Stay Excited and Make Things’.
    So what if there hasn’t been a sale in a while…that doesn’t mean that there won’t be. And I’ll only increase those odds if I add more stuff…stuff that is already made and just sitting around and waiting their turn.
    Maybe I’ll keep up with it better now…you know…cuz Wil told me to.
    http://www.sjlarts.etsy.com

  43. Wow…I needed that ass-chewing. I created an etsy shop a while back but have recently let it get stagnate. So I need to ‘Get Excited AGAIN and Make MORE Things’…and then ‘Stay Excited and Make Things’.
    So what if there hasn’t been a sale in a while…that doesn’t mean that there won’t be. And I’ll only increase those odds if I add more stuff…stuff that is already made and just sitting around and waiting their turn.
    Maybe I’ll keep up with it better now…you know…cuz Wil told me to.
    http://www.sjlarts.etsy.com

  44. I very seldom comment on blogs as my crippling shyness extends to the internets, but here is my link. Please be kind to it:
    http://www.talestooddify.com/
    My thing started out as a weird little story I knew I’d never sell the traditional way. Then it became a collection of weird little stories by authors both successful and starving. Then came artists to make weird little illustrations and comics. Then there was enough interest to make a second one.
    Not only did I make a thing, but it became a place for other creator’s things. I also get to share my love of pulp genre fiction with those who would otherwise not be exposed to it. We plan on putting out new issues of our collective thing quarterly. Things tend to morph into whatever best suits your needs, if you let them. Like shoggoths.
    And Wil, I don’t want to come off as a mewling fangirl, so I’ll simply say I enjoy your work. Thank you for the things you’ve made.

  45. This is great and all, but how come POD T-shirt printers aren’t “serious makers of T-Shirts” but at the same time you guys have embraced POD book publishers? 10 years ago when the quality wasn’t so swell I might agree, but I’ve had some really lovely work done by CafePress and Zazzle recently (on quality, American-made T-shirts no less!), and I just need to chime in and say that the time for snarking over the use of POD for T-shirts is over.

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it’s in a book

I noticed something about the way I read books, yesterday. When I start a book, it's like I'm sitting in an empty space, completely surrounded by the fog of war. Over some number of pages, that fog is pushed back and the world in the book begins to populate the formerly-empty space. Eventually, that space is on the other side of a portal that I step through as effortlessly as I open the cover of the book. I guess I've been doing this my whole life, but I didn't actually notice and note it until yesterday.

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