a few years ago now, i wanted to continue working on my novel despite spending a semester mostly off the grid at a monastery in india. so i decided to create a small book of all of my worldbuilding to date which I could consult with for seamless ideation. 

first i formatted my master document into 8 pages on every 8.5 by 11 page of paper; this way i could cut them into two sided folds. 

with some help from my family i got all of the cutting done and lined up the little pages. 

all together the book was too thick for our sewing machine so i sewed sections together, then made a few stitches through the whole book by hand.

the sections were lined up and glued at the spine with bandage tape. i had seen a similar method with my favorite sketchbooks (midori paper) and wanted to emulate this process. 

for the cover i used cardstock and a jacket of handmade nepali lokta paper i had been saving for 10 years. as a little boy i said i would only use this special paper when i would one day make a holy book — this lore now felt holy enough to me.

all said and glued, my book was complete, with a little bonus pocket behind the back cover. i could now continue writing my lore without google docs until my return to the states. 

some months later, i was trekking through the himalayan foothills. i'd used my little book thoroughly as the rhododendron woods inspired new passages in my imagination, and i could look through this for continuity.

it so happened that coming to the village solaban, the translator we'd hired showed us some bushes on his land. they were lokta, he said, he let a neighbor harvest them for paper — the same kind of paper i had saved for the cover of my book.

walking down the hill to the harvester's home, we found sacks upon sacks of these leaves stowed in the dry and dark first floor. "all going to japan" he said. unlike what i had made my book with, these materials were not being shipped to boutique paper stores in santa monica, but were off to factories to make japanese yen.

attending book fairs in my cities, i keep talking about making another book, one with little illustrations this time — i ought to just sit down and draw.