A Note on the Paper Used in the Writing of This Book

All my books have really been counterproofs, or offsets, remarques, like cartoons, those drawings made to the same scale as the grand painting or fresco but which are in fact only preparatory, and which are applied to the wall, and pricked through or indented: a mere outline or image of some greater design.

This book I like to think of not as a cartoon but as like John F. Peto’s Old Scraps (1894), a miniature trompe l’oeil. Or a trompe l’esprit.

“I am typing this book on yellow paper,” announces the narrator of Stevie Smith’s Novel on Yellow Paper (1936). “It is very yellow paper, and it is this very yellow paper because often sometimes I am typing it in my room at my office, and the paper I use for Sir Phoebus’s letters is blue paper with his name across the corner.” The yellow paper helps distinguish the novel from the work.

Alas, I have adopted no such sensible system.

I have typed on a laptop, and on a desktop. I have read many books: paper books, Kindle books, Google books. I have read articles online, in print journals, and in magazines. I have made copies; I have pressed “Print.” I have written notes in margins, and I have written notes, by hand, in notebooks, and on A4 narrow-feint paper. I have organized my notes into folders. I have disorganized my notes in the folders. I have typed sentences, then paragraphs, then chapters. I have printed out these chapters, marked up revisions and corrections in pencil, and then incorporated these changes, and printed out the chapters again. And again. And again. And again. And then finally, I sent the “document” by email to my editor, who suggested further changes. Some of which I ignored. Most of which I ignored. But some of which I incorporated. And all of which required yet more printing, and marking up and correcting, before sending it all off again. And then again. Proofs. More corrections. More proofs. Interminable? Inexplicable.

In total, this book is made from twenty reams of plain white 80 gsm copier paper, fifteen A4 lined, narrow-feint pads, four Moleskine pocket notebooks, six packs of A5 lined index cards, fifty manila folders (green), and three wrist-thick blocks of Post-it notes (assorted colors). I’m sure there are easier ways of writing books.