I’ve been busily at work on the book, reading through Nina Amir’s How to Blog a Book and doing some of the exercises that I should have done beforehand – things like identifying my audience, writing the mission statement and “pitch” for the book, and so on. I’ve also been contemplating domain names (thanks for all the suggestions!), and I think I’ve settled on one: Creatingcraft.com. To me this captures the essence of the book: creating your own craft projects. It’s also fairly catchy (love that alliteration!) and I can fine-tune the title in my subtitle. The tentative title for the book will be Creating Craft: A Guide to Designing Your Own. I’m currently working on the elements that would go into a book proposal, were I writing one, to get clear in my head who my audience is and what the market/competition is like. I think there’s an audience for this book – this topic is much broader and more interesting than my earlier vision, which focused on the logistics of creating a very complex craft project.
Here is my mission statement for the book:
I’m writing this book because I want to explain how I do my “magic”, producing great creative projects – from start to finish. I also want to empower people to get beyond recipes and explore the world of “rolling their own” – gaining the confidence to design and make their own craft projects, without getting discouraged by mistakes and setbacks en route to their own unique creations.
And here is my elevator pitch (summary of the book in 25 words or less, not including the title):
Creating Craft: A Guide to Designing Your Own empowers crafters to move beyond following project “recipes” and design their own creations, from exploration to design to finished piece.
I think this topic has a lot of potential, and is broad enough to extend beyond weaving (a niche market if there ever was one) and into virtually any craft.
Meanwhile, of course, it has occurred to me that I might just be a little overcommitted. Here is what is currently on my plate:
Short term:
- Celtic Braid Coat – hopefully to be finished in the next day or two
- katazome experiments – in process, hope to finish this round of experiments this week
- quilting design class – finishes in a week or two
Long term:
- book – 6-24 months
- Phoenix Rising – 12-18 months
- three-dimensional design class (just got in off the waitlist, hurrah!) – 3 months
- Exploring the gallery market – 1-3 months
plus various less pressing commitments.
I normally deal with multiple large projects by “chunking” out time, working on one thing in the morning, another in the evenings, and splitting up time on weekends. However, four major projects is more than I can handle. So I will have to think about what I want to focus on.
Off to work on the Celtic Braid Coat! I’m hoping to finish it today or tomorrow.
This is nit picking–on your elevator pitch. I find the word “empowers” to be so overused as to be annoying. (I feel the same way about the word “experience” when used in terms like “having a banking experience” when it means “go to the bank’). How about “encourages”? “teaches?” Or “shows crafters how to move . . .”
I’m really looking forward to following the gestation of your book.
I laughed when I saw your comment – because I thought the same thing! I started out using the word “enables” (which I think is a better word) but finally switched to “empowers” because it’s more hip and trendy and marketing-speak for that kind of thing. But I agree with you that “enables” (or something else) might work better.
Tien,
As one of your (formerly) silent fans, I am thrilled that you’ll be writing a book. As for the audience; I’m here! And I spent much of yesterday staring at my loom out of the corner of my eye, paralyzed because I decided to abandon the recipe but I didn’t know how to proceed. So write your book! And in the meantime I think I’ll put a simple warp on and just get weaving.
Great idea! Don’t forget that you can go to various online resources if you need technical advice – weavolution.com, ravelry (Warped weavers group), the weaving or weavetech yahoo groups. That’s what I did when I was starting out, and it was completely invaluable.
Glad you’re interested in the book!