Ouch

So I'm home today, looking rather like Quasimodo, with one side of my face swollen and bruised. Turns out that the bottom wisdom tooth is indeed a different beast from the top one - it had to be sawn into four bits before it would come out. I'm suffering a bit today. Yesterday I wanted to tear my jaw off and run away to join the circus. Today I am slightly better (although would still like to join the circus - possibly as a bearded lady, if it will hide my swollen jaw).

Anyway.

As you know, I have been working at the publishing company for the last few weeks. It has been a crazily busy time, as we had about five different publications to put out in that time, but it has been fun too. I really enjoy working with the graphic designers on layout and image selection - it's not something I get to do with my own books, as all the design stuff is out of my hands. I love working with the elements on a page, making something alive and moving from something static, and choosing the perfect image that will make the article pop. The whole process also gave me an idea (and watching The September Issue yesterday helped too!). In putting together a print publication, you create a scrapbook that details what appears on each page - the ads, the articles, the image spaces and so on. I have been revising Current Book again, and needed a new way of looking at material that has become far too familiar to me - too familiar in that it's hard to maintain a detached perspective on it. So I've started to create a scrapbook. I printed out the whole thing, and I have been cutting and pasting sections into the scrapbook in the order in which I'd like them to appear (I'm making some quite substantial structural changes again!) and writing new scenes on sheets of paper that I'm inserting into the book as well. It has made a nice change from staring at a screen, and feels much more physical and real than typing. Theoretically, when I've finished the scrapbook, I'll be able to adjust the file to reflect the print book (I've recorded the page number of each snippet in the book as I've gone along, so that I remember where to find it). So this is what I'm doing at the moment. That, and rinsing my mouth out with salt and holding a packet of frozen peas against my jaw.