I heard back from a reader who began using Paper Sloyd with his stuck at home kids. Matt said, "The ‘lesson’ was a success, despite initial grumbling. Once the kids decided for themselves that they could make the project theirs by customizing things, they were all over it. Attached is a photo."Thanks Matt, for sharing this. I've been reflecting on the narrative qualities of wood, that: "where there's a knot, there had been a branch" and how much we are like trees. They tell their stories. We tell ours, even though we often tend to take the easy way out, by using our words, rather than mind, muscle, and hands. It makes a difference how we think of narrative. Is it only human jabber, or is it connected to deeper human experience? One difference between trees and man is that trees don't jabber.
This coming week I have a podcast with the Writer's Colony in Eureka Springs, so I've also been reflecting on the difference between how-to writers, and those who dwell upon fictional subjects. This is not to disparage other forms of writing which also require effort and imagination, but we how-to writers are held to the bonds and boundaries of the real world, and in that are empowered to bring real change to real lives. A child writing a note to Nana to fill an envelope carefully crafted from paper offers a small example of our work.
Make, fix, and create. Assist others in living and learning lifewise.
I remember the time where, when you bought a software, you would get two paper books with it:
ReplyDeleteA reference manual (theory?) and a how-to book (practice) in the form of lessons. Those are two different things. Writing good reference and how-to books is difficult and we often receive extremely poor translations (if we now receive anything as the designer believes it is "user friendly").
The advantage of fictional books, as well for the reader as for the writer, is that the reader can construct his own vision. That is why we are so often disappointed when the book is translated in a movie.