Category Archives: Thoughts on Building a Book

Visiting Wilsonia

After spending days, weeks and months just drawing, designing, studying photos and thinking about Wilsonia, it feels almost dreamlike to be there in person.

I was privileged to be a guest in this little cabin:

If it weren’t for the fact that the water heater has only a 10 gallon capacity, I might be tempted to move in permanently. Smart folks, my hosts! 😎 This might be my favorite cabin. (I know, I say that a lot!)

Visiting Wilsonia causes my project to become more complicated. As I become more familiar with the cabins and the community, I get to know them all better and I keep seeing more things to draw.

I redesigned some of the pages to accommodate more drawings, and added several pages. This means that I need to complete more than the 230 drawings on the schedule for 2013.

It might be good to stop visiting Wilsonia until the drawings are completed and the design is set in cement.

But, then I’d miss you all. Wow, your friendliness, hospitality, enthusiasm and support just bowls me over!

Thank you, Wilsonia!

Think About This

The Cabins of Wilsonia will not be a history book. As an artist rather than a historian, I am interested in how things look right now. My goal with The Cabins of Wilsonia is to capture a snapshot and provide an overview of cabin life in the early part of the twenty-first century.

The text will be stories and thoughts from cabin folks. I want those who live cabin life to tell about it. I can tell about cabin life in Mineral King, but in Wilsonia I am an observer. My experiences there are limited, and I come there with my work face on rather than for rest and recreation.

I’ve made a list of questions to help you think about cabin life. The list is now on a separate page on this website. The page is called Questions to Ponder.

If you think of other things to share about cabin life that are not on the list, that is good too.

Historians spend much time reconstructing history, gathering, interpreting, organizing and preserving the past. Maybe the work I am doing here will make the work of future historians a little bit easier.

Together we will make a book that will one day be a historical treasure about a place that already is a historical treasure.

Your Opinion Requested

When you design your own book, it is hard to know when to stop messing around with the design.

While in Wilsonia last week, I spent time at a cabin that I have already drawn. I wasn’t sure the angle was the best one, but at the time it seemed to be the only one.

I was wrong. Now, I have to decide if it needs to be redrawn. Perhaps I should have left my camera at home for this trip. Decisions, decisions. . . where is the big boss to tell me what to do?? Oh – in the mirror? Hmmm, she doesn’t look adequate for the job. . .

May I have your opinions on this?

Thanks. You can comment by hitting “Leave a Reply” or email me at cabinart at cabinart dot net. (I wrote it out that way because someone somewhere sometime said you shouldn’t put your eddress in your blog or all the robots and spiders and trolls will bother you. Better safe than sorry!)

Sooner or Later, It Had To Happen

In order to not burn through so much paper, I often draw 2 pictures on the same piece of paper. So many of the drawings for The Cabins of Wilsonia are small. I usually draw larger than the size it will be in the book because things look even better when reduced. (Hmmm, is this a diet advertisement? Nope1) But, I don’t want to draw any larger than necessary, because there are many many drawings still ahead, and the larger they are, the longer they take.

two pencil drawings on a page

I’ve been procrastinating on the job of trimming the drawings. It is a little boring, and there are so many remaining to be drawn that it hasn’t seemed necessary to begin trimming. However, I finally faced up to task, got out my guillotine-type paper cutter and all my packaging materials and dove in.

Oops. It was stuck to another drawing and I whacked them together without knowing this was underneath. Glad it was already scanned. (always a bright side. . .)

Perhaps it is time to take a break, get some perspective, catch my breath, plan, rest and rejuvenate.

How to Participate in This Book Project

Greetings, Gentle Readers.

There are 2 ways to participate in this project:

1. Email me your stories and thoughts about cabin ownership, membership in a lovely mountain community, or whatever seems appropriate to you to be included in the book. I plan on including many of your thoughts as quotes

2. Comment on this blog. Otherwise, the sound of crickets chirping and grass growing leads me to believe I am all alone here. Sob.

It has come to my attention that the commenting system on this blog is quite annoying.

At the top of each post it says “Leave a reply” or “# replies”. This is clickable. Click it. Type your stuff into the appropriate places and submit or respond or enter. (I’m fuzzy here because as the “administrator” of the blog, it shows me a different method.)

You will think your comment didn’t go through. It did. It lands in a Spam folder, which I have to open and mark as “Not Spam”.

After that it goes to a “Pending” folder. I have to open that and mark your comment as “Approved”.

I will correct typos and remove anything I deem too personal for the World Wide Web. And, I will respond to your comment.

Then, I will go to the Spam folder, mark my comment as Not Spam, go to the Pending Folder and approve my own comment.

No wonder people don’t comment on this blog! If I knew how to make it easier without breaking the blog, I would. However, I need to go draw now.

Thanks for visiting, reading and commenting.

Jeffrey Shooting Star Amidst More Street Confusion

The Cabins of Wilsonia will be in one color of ink. I’m drawing the cabins in pencil, and graphite is gray. This means the book will most likely be printed in the gray ink that most closely matches the color of the pencils.

All the photos from which I am working are in color. Sometimes I have convert one to black and white, because otherwise it is hard to tell if it will look any good in pencil.

For example, a cabin with bright blue shutters normally is known and appreciated for its bright blue shutters. How will that look in pencil? Will the drawing just look so-so?

The meadow that can be seen from Sierra Lane/Drive/Road (see? I can’t figure out this Wilsonia street designation!) is awash with Jeffrey Shooting Star in early July. It is fabulous. Of course, the color is the fabulous part.

You’ve probably seen these. They like to grow with their feet wet.

I photographed a cabin on Alta, looking across that meadow from Sierra. (If I just say the name without the designation of Avenue/Way/Street then there is no confusion.) I thought it was a great way to show off the cabin’s superior location.

However, if the big deal about the view is the color, is there a point to drawing it in pencil?

I think the light across the meadow in the lower photo makes this second view the clear winner.

And those Jeffrey Shooting Stars? They can be our little secret. We wouldn’t want 100s of looky-loos flooding Sierra Lane and turning it into Sierra Highway each July.

A Weird Task in Book Building

As I draw, it is necessary to scan each drawing. Then what do I do with it?

I package it up with mat board in a clear bag.

I ran out of mat boards, so went to eBay to find someone selling scraps. Because I am a very frugal person, I ordered the least expensive.

The corners were slightly banged up, but for my use, it didn’t matter.

But yuck! They smelled like mildew. I recognized this smell from when I was in college and stored some things in my uncle’s basement one summer. Smells linger in a memory. You have probably read that smells are one of the greatest memory invokers.

This is a small sample. You should have seen them spread all over the area that used to be my lower lawn (not enough water in my neighborhood to sustain that much green with a clear conscience.

What to do??

The sun! I laid them out in the sun. They curled. I flipped them over. They curled back. I sniffed. They smelled fine.

Phew. Who knew all the information and skills that would be necessary in building a book?

What’s Going On Here?

List Lady Here. A progress report, thoughts on building a book, and new information about the arrangement of Wilsonia streets for you:

This cabin on Park Street/Lane/Road/Avenue (just kidding on the last one!) is an architectural design repeated throughout Wilsonia. There were 5 cabins like this. Now there are 4, and one has been remodeled so isn’t immediately recognizable as the same design. Do you know which cabins these are?

All the drawings are finished for June. Yes, you read that right. This is so I can do all of July’s drawings in June. What’s going on here? July is going to be extraordinarily busy for this California artist. If I don’t draw ahead, I’ll fall behind.
I found someone who calls himself The Book Designer. He is a book designer. (Duh.) He helps people self-publish their books. (If they pay him.) I feel greatly reassured that when the time comes to make some difficult decisions such as cover design, typestyles, and finding a printer, The Book Designer will be my new best friend.
Has anyone else besides me noticed all the streets in Wilsonia that begin with “L” are going east and west? This is confusing at times. When I think of all those L streets, I’m flipping through my mental Rolodex, reciting Laurel, Lily, LeConte, Lupine, Lilac. . . sometimes they are alphabetical, sometimes they are random. But I just figured out that they ARE alphabetically arranged in Wilsonia, beginning in the southern end of the community! There’s an AHA! moment!

Questions for You, Oh Wilsonia Cabin Owner

I’m drawing a book called The Cabins of Wilsonia. Drawing it, not really writing it. There will be a preface, an introduction and a conclusion, along with explanations of street names, and I have written most of this already.

It is my hope that Wilsonia cabin folks will do the writing.

The point of the book is to show what it is like to have a cabin in Wilsonia in pictures and in the stories and thoughts from the cabin folks.

When people are asked about their cabins, the tendency is to recite a list of previous owners by name and approximate date of ownership. Since it is my goal to shoe what it is like to have a cabin NOW, clearly I haven’t been asking the right questions!

A friend of mine helped me formulate a list of questions to trigger ideas and thoughts and memories and impressions and information and personal stories about cabin life.

I know it is a pain to write. It is a pain to email. We are all busy. So, for starters, I will just ask questions.

Perhaps over time, these will cause you to have ideas, and when we talk in person, you will have thought about or answers to a question or two. Or maybe I should mail out a questionnaire. . . or put something in the Wilsonia newsletter. . . or email those of you who have shared your eddresses?

Let us begin with several questions to ponder:

What is your favorite thing to do at your cabin?

What is your favorite month in Wilsonia and why?

How has your cabin changed through the years?

How Much For That Book??

The Cabins of Mineral King was published in 1998 by Jane Coughran and me, under the self-publishing name of Cabinart Books. The plural, “books” was optimistic, because neither one of us had plans for another. We had to buy 10 ISBNs, so we were prepared if 9 more ideas came along.

The book sold out, and now when people ask me where to get one, I send them to eBay or to Amazon. They had been going for around $100, which is quite astonishing to me! Janey and I sold them for $50 hardcover, and $30 softcover. That in itself was quite astonishing to me back then.

Now, if someone wants a book, look at what is available!

Holy cow. That is incentive to buy The Cabins of Wilsonia when it is first for sale!

Of course, these are just listings. Who knows if they are selling??

This is the link in case you are interested. Maybe you can get a better deal on eBay. If you are really lucky, maybe you can find one at a yard sale!