Back to the ABORTIVE ATTEMPTS

The yucky weather means that the only project I can legitimately work on is Lichtenbergianism for Kids, for which you may recall I’m trying to finish the illustrations.

So have I finished the illustrations for Lichtenbergianism for Kids? Ha, it is to laugh. No, I have been seized by the idea that I need to rewrite the entire book — or at least refocus it — with my specific audience in mind.

To be sure, I did write L/Kids from scratch, adapting the “grown-up” text to a younger reader. (For those who do not know, I was an elementary media specialist for the second half of my career.) But the thought that perhaps I haven’t done that well enough to engage the kid at the very opening has taken root in my mind and will not go away.

Perhaps, I thought, if I rewrite the introduction, the rest of it will be okay…

And so I pulled out a new WASTE BOOK, and so far I have scribbled three new introductions, each of which is labeled as an ABORTIVE ATTEMPT.

In the spirit of AUDIENCE, or what Austin Kleon would call SHOWING MY WORK, I will present all three later this week and analyze them in terms of the ABORTIVE ATTEMPT >> GESTALT >> SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION cycle. Yes, I will show my failures as well as my successes, since that is the main point I think younger artists in particular need to learn.

Till Wednesday…