Monday, October 21, 2013

Let There Be Light

My adventure has been on hold for the past few days because I managed, on the very first day, to hit a bit of a roadblock.

See, I can't write straight to save my life. And when I decided to do this, and decided that I wanted to hand-bind the books, it meant I couldn't use normal lined paper, because of the way that I have to fold it to put the book together. But it's important to me that this look nice. I want this to be something that I can cherish for a lifetime, not something that I'm going to open up and think, "I really need to work on my penmanship."

But, I figured it was fine. My plan was to very lightly line each page in pencil, so that I could use the lines to guide my writing and then go back and erase them later. Which is a grand idea. Except that I got exactly eight verses into Genesis before realizing that this was a completely unworkable situation. 

As if hand copying the Bible doesn't take long enough, measuring and precisely lining each individual page takes about six times longer. If I wanted to meet my goal of finishing in a year, I either had to quit my job and spend every waking moment lining my paper, or I needed a new plan.

Enter my makeshift light box:



After some trial and error, I finally bought a clear plastic storage bin and four cheap touch lights and threw them together. The result? A solution to my problem.

Instead of lining each page, I lined one plain sheet of paper with Sharpie, taped it to the box, turned on the lights, and suddenly I have guidelines for my paper. It also means I don't have to go back and erase the penciled-on lines later. Two birds, one stone.

So, with that problem out of the way, I'm actually ready to get going on this, now. I'm thrilled to see what's in store as I move forward.

In fact, a friend of mine is so inspired, she's decided to do the same thing. She's joining me in this ambitious venture to hand copy the Bible. She also had the brilliant idea of printing horizontal lines on her paper with her printer. Clearly, she's the more logical of the two of us.

So, there you have it. A short, technical update before I get into the real meat of the project. 

And now, I'm off to go do some more writing.


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