On Secret Projects and Mild Delusion
At the moment, I have a couple of ideas quietly lurking in the background.
They are not finished. They are, at best, concepts. The kind that feel excellent at 11pm and slightly suspicious the next morning.
I’m not talking about them yet - not because they’re especially groundbreaking, but because I’ve learned that saying things out loud too early turns them into obligations. And nothing kills a good idea faster than feeling like you now have to make it work.
For now, they’re just sitting there. Waiting to either become something or quietly fade into obscurity. We’ll just have to wait and see. Ooh, foreshadowing.
Hopecore (Unfortunately, It Works)
There’s a trend floating around called hopecore, which sounds chronically online but is essentially just choosing to be optimistic in a stubborn way, in the face of the way the world insists on being.
Which, slightly inconveniently, is exactly what you need when running a small handmade business. Because the reality is: things take time. Sales are inconsistent. Social media behaves unpredictably.
And yet, you keep going.
You make the next thing. You try the next idea. You assume that something might land. May as well - you’ve got nothing better to do. Or I don’t, at least. Maybe I should stick to the first person.
Making Things Without a Guarantee
Everything I currently sell started as a vague idea that seemed worth trying.
Handmade Kindle sleeves, handbound classic novels, printable typesets for bookbinding - none of them arrived fully formed. They were all experiments at some point.
Some worked. Most didn’t. (Please see: the shelves of failures housed in my dad’s office, as per the last blog post.)
That’s just how it goes - there isn’t really a moment where everything suddenly feels certain. You just keep making things and see what sticks. I’m not sure I have a point to what I’m saying here - this isn’t my best blog post, by any means. Ah well, we plough on.
Meanwhile, in Slightly More Concrete News
While the more mysterious ideas continue to hover in the background, I have been working on something slightly more tangible: a growing collection of new printable classic novel typesets for the bookbinding community.
Currently in progress:
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Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
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Frankenstein
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Grimms’ Fairy Tales
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Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
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Journey to the Centre of the Earth
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The Jungle Book
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Le Morte d’Arthur (in two volumes, but damn, it is long)
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The Wind in the Willows
All carefully formatted as bookbinder-ready PDFs, so whilst some ideas remain theoretical, others are steadily becoming real.
Keeping It Slightly Fun
If everything becomes overly planned and optimised, it gets very dull very quickly.
I didn’t start making things to become exceptionally efficient at producing items. I started because I liked the process - sewing, folding, designing, figuring things out as I went.
Which is why I’m letting these newer ideas develop without too much pressure. If they work, great. If they don’t, at least they existed briefly and taught me something before disappearing.
Plans, but in a Relaxed Way
There are still plenty of things I want to make. More handbound books, more Kindle sleeve collections, more printable typesets for classic novels.
And then there are the other ideas. The ones I’m not quite ready to explain yet. They’re coming along. Slowly. Possibly. Ugh.
Final Thought Before I Go and Overthink Everything
Making plans - even vague, unrealistic ones - feels like a reasonable approach.
Not because everything will work. I know it won’t.
But because occasionally, something does.
And that’s usually enough to keep going.
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