Finish This Book: The Story

This is the page where I feel like the book properly begins and you start getting into the real meat of the activities it gives you. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy the pages up to this point, it’s just that they were fairly simple superficial things you were doing with the pages. Here’s where it started to get fun and I found myself needing to devote a little more time to my project.

The first page tells you the story behind the book. You’re informed that Keri Smith, or at least the book compiler, had spent the day in the library. We’re told they had been reading The Library of Babel* which is underlined and asterisked but which I’m yet to find out what the asterisk relates to.

They then had to hurry out of the library and we’re told:

Outside, the night was warm for the time of year, which was fall, and there were leaves blowing wildly all around. It was threatening to rain and little flashes of lightning were flickering in the distance. I would have to hurry so as not to get caught in the impending storm.

To get to my house, I passed through a park, which had a long and windy path. Every 20 feet or so there was a park bench, of the standard wood and cast-iron variety. (Please draw one on the opposite page.)

Well, I had to follow the instructions, didn’t I?

I’m not so hot at things like perspective so I drew my little bench and then decided to fill in some other details from the page before. In my mind’s eye there would be buildings in the background where the lightning is striking but I’m no good at drawing those so I just left them out. I felt like the bench would be near a tree, which is turning brown with the autumn.

I also threw in some leaves blowing off the tree and some leaves on the floor too, because that’s what the estate looks like when autumn hits. I love autumn on the estate so I was trying to remember how it looked because I was doing this in the summer.

I also took the time to Google what lightning actually looks like. Most of the photos had just white jaggedy shapes. Looking at it now I think I should’ve made it thinner, but some of the photos show really wide white bursts and they mostly had purple and blue around the edges so I tried to get that across.

I’m actually really proud of my bench, tree and swirly looking cloud. I think this page succeeded in sucking me right into the book. I spent a good two or three days on it, making it all perfect.

Have you got Finish This Book? Care to share your ‘The Story’ page?