Letters

“What are you, little book? Reveal yourself!”

It’s late on Monday evening and I’m working on prototype four and five. I want two of them this time to test different paper stock, paper sizes, and some quick cover ideas. But, I get to thinking; if the format of this book is entirely up for debate right now then why not everything else?

I notice myself hesitate when I set the cover and the spine of these prototypes with Adventures in Typography. Is that a good name for this book anymore? I watch my cursor blink up and down and then I realize no, it’s not. It works for the title of a newsletter but it doesn’t feel right for this project and it hasn’t for quite some time. The title is too long and cludgey; thick, like treacle. I want something simpler, something lighter, something without quite so much baggage.

What else could this book be?

I’m rethinking all this with thanks in part to Delight, a tiny book of tiny essays published in 1949 by the British novelist J.B. Priestley. I’ve been reading this book slowly over the last few days and I’m somewhat obsessed with how gently he writes, how light this book is, how each word click-clacks with the next that it feels almost careless. Easy.

Delight is a book made up of extremely brief chapters, each a description of something that Priestley found delightful in life; fountains and seaside towns and tobacco and tobacco and tobacco. I’ve never read anything of Priestley’s before but this kind of lightness in his writing reminds me of Calvino and Reufle and Douglas Adams. There’s a playfulness in every bit of every page, culminating in that title that’s so simple that it might almost be too simple: Delight.

I look at Priestley’s book on my desk and I return to the two designs of my book that sit in open browser tabs. How do I make this all feel so much lighter? Not just the design and the title but the words and the chapters and the whole format of the thing. I sigh.

And then, on the cover and the spine, I type: Letters.

Huh.

Letters as in newsletters. Letters as in short little notes sent to friends far away. Letters as in type and glyphs and pixels and metal dabbed with sour, sticky ink. Maybe this title is too cute by half but I realize that with this new title I’m no longer writing Adventures in Typography, I’m writing this whole other thing called Letters which somehow opens up all these other possibilities. It might not be a permanent name—maybe more like a secret code name for the book. Either way, it feels liberating to be writing something new again, as if I can discard everything I thought the old book was and focus on this exciting, unknown thing.

Letters is no longer this stodgy book that had slowed me down and captured me in its pudding-like embrace. Letters is light on its feet. It feels dangerous and exciting. And so as soon as I typed out the title on the cover and spine I quickly formatted things and sent off the $10 for each prototype. Now I wait to see how these books will turn out.

This is the trick of writing a book; if it doesn’t feel exciting then I won’t sit down at my desk. I won’t play with the writing and the design, I won’t explore the infinite alternative ways to construct a sentence. If it doesn’t feel punk rock then I just won’t do it. So in order to get work done I have to constantly make my work feel new and exciting over and over again, even if that means replacing the title every few weeks with something else to keep me on my toes.

So I might not keep Letters around for long but it’s changed how I think of my book and that’s all that counts.