Putting It Together

Already late, and now this.  Normally by now I'd have the calender done, meaning pictures already selected, already walked to the copy store, already paid for, already made up and already on-sale at the bookstore where I work, but... no.  For whatever reason I am late this year.  To be honest, this year I didn't really even start to think about making my annual Usedbuyer2.0 Calendar until an old friend travelling in the area stopped by the bookstore to say hello.  One of the great benefits of producing the calendar and the like -- meaning my little alphabet book -- has been always having at the ready a small gift or two to personalize and share with friends, old and new.  There's something quite satisfying in that.  (Of course, there are only but so many times one can proffer the same homemade goods.  Unlike jam, or the last of the summer tomatoes, a calendar comes, as it were, but once a year.)  Anyway, I reached into the cubby at the Used Books Desk to give my friend one of the copies of my wee book that I normally keep there and was surprised to find I'm fresh out.  Had to buy one!  Most embarrassing.  Insult to injury, I did find the last, sadly neglected, already-marked-down-to-nothing copy of this year's 2013 calendar.  Gave him that, despite it already being September.  My old friend is a polite fellow, well brung up and all that, so pleasant murmurings of admiration later, it finally dawned on me that I'd yet to make a 2014 calender, or even collect and organize the pieces.

Here's a how-de-do.  Years past, I had the thing done and out by at least the middle of August!  (I checked.)  Last year, I even made two different calendars; the regular and the SF/F.  (Never again.)

So, last night I spent rummaging around my already disastrously ill-organized office -- made ever so much worse by my recent efforts to donate-away a goodly part of my personal library, which is now all over the joint -- and eventually, I found most of the caricatures I was planning to include in this year's number.  Most, please note.

Here's the one that got away.  For whatever reason, I particularly liked this picture of Temple Grandin, and planned almost from the moment I'd finished it, to include it in the calendar.  I very much admire Ms. Grandin.  No one else on earth could have induced me to read so much about cattle, for one.  Also her personal story I find both fascinating and more than a little inspiring, frankly.  Beyond that, I liked the likeness.  Not to be found, searching high, searching low.  I looked through folders of sketches, in piles of paper, even under and behind my desk and printer (where, I'll admit, I found some drawings of frogs and a very old doodle of weird Seattle winter hats, but no Temple.  Damn it.)

As I've mentioned here before, for nearly every drawing I post, there are usually half a dozen attempts that make it no further than the end of my pencil before being written off as just so much bad.  Obviously, I'm less concerned with the artistic standard of my doodles, though even there I've either abandoned or trashed far more than I've ever put up here.  Still, there are things I thought enough of in the moment to post that I've later come to regret, not usually to do with either subject or "content" for want of a better word, usually just because the drawing on reflection doesn't seem much.  Let it pass.  When it comes to selecting the drawings for the calendar though, I do try to pick only those I think might have some appeal to persons other than myself, and only those I still find satisfying as drawings.

That's a tricky business, saying why one seems to me better than another, after the fact.  They may not be "art" in any grand sense, but mine own, and I know it when I see it, so to say.

Even without Ms. Grandin, this year's calendar will have much the usual mix, if fewer women than is usual for me.  Most years it's been about 50/50 as to sex.  (One stuffy old bird made the memorable complaint that she could not in good conscience buy my alphabet book of poets because there weren't enough women in it.  Alas, another forty eight cents in royalties lost.)  As it now stands, the new calendar will have but two women in it.  It will however be more diverse than usual by nationality, with one German and two French authors, mixed in with the Americans and Brits.  George Sand, to be seen above with her cigar, killing two birds with one stone this year, diversity-wise (I was asked specifically to include a South American this time, but on further examination, I didn't like my drawing of my beloved Jorge Amado enough to use it in the calendar.)

At any rate, the selection is what it is, and the pages have all been tagged with Post-its identifying the months for each, and the lot delivered to the copiers.

Better late than never.