What’s the recipe for a good book (about creativity)?

 

Ask a publisher and they’ll probably say you need a fascinating topic, an original angle and an attractive layout. Plus, it must be well written and inspiring to read. And these are the very ingredients for Volume 2 of my book 'La créativité liée au vélo – Bike-inspired creativity' (out now!).

How do you create great content? Each day, for more than 20 years, my job has been to provide an answer to this question for my clients. And I’ve applied the same formula to a pet project of mine: velosophy.

Nine years ago my love of cycling and creativity led me to launch my blog https://velosophe.be/. Week after week I publish posts about incredibly creative bikes and it’s proved to be a winning formula. To date, I’ve published over 250 posts, given talks on the subject, put together exhibitions of extraordinary bikes and just published my second book.

An adventure in creative publishing

 “I believe a title is first and foremost a promise of what’s to come”

Naturally, mention creativity and people understandably expect something quite special. To meet these expectations, every detail counts, from the writing to the choice of paper, the translation and the layout. And it’s vital they all come together as a coherent whole.

Creative translation

As in Volume 1, the articles in the second book are all bilingual (French and English), which was quite the challenge considering my reputation for wordplay and the odd touch of humour. Two amazing translators – Moira Bluer (technical) and Alison Hughes (creative) – joined forces to make it happen.

“This project was completely different from the kind of jobs I usually take on because of the freedom Pascal gave us to ‘play’ with his source texts in order to make the English version as lively and creative as the French, and even introduce wordplay where possible. You’re entering the realms of ‘transcreation’, which is a long way from a translation that stays as close as possible to the original. Here you need to convey the message while retaining the flavour (or spirit) of the original. You can give free rein to your imagination,” Moira says

“Pascal is the master of wordplay. Unlike some authors, his plays on words are not just there to show off, they’re really clever in the context. Sometimes they can’t be replicated in the English and we’re lucky that he lets us create our own if we see the opportunity to use English ones elsewhere. The titles are a great example. Sometimes they take a bit of thinking out and I need to use a thesaurus in both languages and other Google searches to find synonyms and rhyming words,” Alison adds.

There was a huge amount of communication between the two translators, resulting in some great flashes of inspiration, such as the one below (see the title):

 

“It takes time to do this kind of job well. Inspiration can strike immediately or it can take days. The highlight of this project? That sweet ‘oh, yes’ moment when you finally figure out a nice solution to a linguistic problem,” Moira concludes.

"Working on a project like this gives you the confidence to be more creative in other jobs"

(Moira Bluer)

Creative layout

For the layout I worked with a friend (a distant relative, in fact). “It’s not every day you get the opportunity to create the layout for a 180-page book from start to finish,” Brigitte Foissac tells me. “The challenge was to try to use my creativity on every double-page spread to ensure the layout echoed (and did justice to) the ingenuity of each of the bike inventors. I had to think long and hard about it and try to highlight one specific feature of each creation, without having the luxury (unfortunately) of being able to spend three hours on every page.”

Brigitte very much enjoyed the process but did mention the intricate nature of the task. “You need to pay attention to every single detail. I’d very much like to repeat the experience and continue to work with all types of media, moving away from the digital world from time to time.”

What was particularly motivating and enjoyable about this project was the creative input from all sides – the subject matter of course, but also the content and translations. It’s really stimulating to find yourself in an environment where the ideas are flowing freely and you can pick up on lots of details. For inspiration, I always begin a creative graphic project by reading and looking for ideas and concepts everywhere I can. With this one, I had (almost) everything right in front of me!

Print to impress

The final stage is printing the book. Not every paper grade is equal and the weight you choose can have a huge impact on the underlying costs, such as shipping charges.

“The paper chosen must set off the quality of the photos and illustrations while ensuring the book is easy to read,” says Fabienne Naumann-de Morteuil, sales manager at Graphius. “Nowadays, we have less and less paper in our daily lives. So, when it comes to printing books, our primary concern is that the reader must want to touch the paper and enjoy it as something special!”

As you can see, this project was very much about teamwork. In addition to the contributors mentioned above, I would also like to thank the photographers Kévin Zoso and Michel Evrard, and my friend Jacques Bodard for his invaluable help in filming the video for the crowdfunding campaign.

 

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COPING WITH COVID

We saw it coming but it was still a shock. 

After watching other countries succumb to the novel coronavirus, the UK finally went into lockdown on 23 March. I still had some work to finish so was kept busy for the first two weeks. Suddenly it seemed as though the country had shut down, everyone was putting their feet up and I wasn’t getting a chance to join the party.

Then my work run out and I had permission to press the stop button, which I did and promptly went into a deep coma. I was exhausted.

I’m normally pretty motivated. I’m not a procrastinator. And yet suddenly I found myself sitting on the sofa in my PJs at 10am staring out at our beautiful view with some programme spewing Corona facts at me from the TV.

                                                                  Sunshine at last

This was not some deep depression. I was enjoying every minute of it. As a bonus, the sun was shining after many weeks of rain. I could have been on holiday in the Med (well, technically speaking I couldn’t but that was how it felt).

Now,  I’m not someone who has to be constantly busy, takes on too much work and too many other things and is permanently exhausted. I don’t deal with stress very well so I keep my activities to a minimum, enjoy a glass of wine after a long day and lose myself in home improvement programmes on the TV.  So why was I so tired?

Quite apart from the emotional stress of the situation that was unfolding worldwide, I realised that even with keeping everything to a minimum, my life had still been pretty busy. I wasn’t in a high-powered job with constant travelling or setting myself ambitious mental of physical challenges but I had reached the limit of my own mental and physical load.

When running a business you don’t often switch off. I was still checking my emails and reading social media posts in the evenings. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram don’t close at 5pm and there were interesting opportunities to be found, information to read and, after a day at the computer, it was nice to interact with colleagues. I may even have posted the occasional photo of my grandchildren.

Speaking of which, we were responsible for their childcare on a Wednesday, though sometimes with a sleepover which meant a full 24 hours. Then there was the 20-mile round trips to do a nursery drop off and pick up, trips to the beach or park with lots of physical activity, not to mention the three flights of stairs we all had to climb back up to the flat.

My grandson was two and my granddaughter four although, as she recently reminded her grandad on a FaceTime session, she has since turned five (Don’t call me sweetie, Grandad, I’m five now). While they are adorable, childcare was physically demanding.

After I dropped them off I would pour myself a glass of wine, settle down to watch the TV and promptly fall asleep. The next morning I would drag myself from my bed to attend a yoga class before launching myself back into work. 

On Saturdays I went to Glasgow to visit my mum. Although I took the train and didn’t do much when I got there, I still didn’t get home till nearly 7pm.

Sunday was my day of rest, unless I was catching up with some work to allow me to take the following Wednesday off for childcare.

So my weeks were pretty busy (for me) and, on reflection, I was only really taking about two weeks holiday a year, including bank holidays. One week was sacrosanct; my solo trip to visit friends in France during which we did very little apart from visiting a few local places and eating and drinking plenty of wine and champagne.

But what about all those lovely places I travelled to for conferences and workshops? After all, I sometimes tagged on a day for sightseeing. But they often involved two days travel and, much as I enjoyed them, the mental load was quite considerable and the noise of 200+ people in one place after a silent office was sometimes deafening.

If you think that for a positive person this all sounds very negative, you’d be right. Truth be told, I felt as though I had entered a new phase of my life and the one I had just left behind didn’t sound very appealing any more.

Add to this the fact I turned 60 during lockdown and I simply longed for retirement. I imagined being able to switch off and stop worrying about where my next month’s money, next translation and next client were going to come from. And waking up in the morning with the full day ahead of me to do everything I had been longing to do for years.

Apart from the fact I had to cancel a holiday and lots of subsequent birthday celebrations, the day itself was lovely with messages, nice food and drink and a virtual Zoom party with some friends.

                                                                Birthday bubbles

The next day it was back down to earth. By now I was not feeling so much tired but overwhelmed.

Everywhere I was being reminded we might not get this time again so I needed to make the most of it. There was

•          cleaning to be done,
•           so much free CPD material online and reading I needed to catch up on,
•           so many online exercise options,
•           so many films and TV programmes to watch,
•           so much cooking I wanted to do (not least to work my way through all the exotic ingredients        I’d filled my cupboards with over the years) 

So many options available to stop us getting bored and make sure our business survived the crisis. But I wasn’t bored and wasn’t quite sure how my business was going to survive in all the uncertainty. 

n    

      On the first day of lockdown I read a useful article on Twitter posted by an academic who had lived in war-torn countries warning people to stop. To give up the idea of writing that article you’ve been meaning to write, of becoming the best home-school teacher in the country, of throwing yourself headlong into marketing as soon as work dries up. To simply stop and give yourself time to adjust. I took these wise words on board.

Fast forward a month and I’m pretty glad I did. I now feel as though I’m waking up from my coma, picking up a few books from the bedside table, watching webinars and starting to think about what I’ll actually do when I do get out of bed, metaphorically-speaking of course.

But there’s still that nagging uncertainty. How can I possibly plan ahead?

I’ve accepted that I might not be able to make big plans but that doesn’t mean I should sit back and do nothing. I’ve had my rest and recuperation so it’s time to pick up speed again but I won’t be going from 0 to 60 anytime soon. We’re in this for the long haul so I want to take it slowly and follow my instincts.

The one challenge I did set myself was to do one meaningful thing each day. During the week this can be watching a webinar, answering emails, writing something or sorting out files which should have been thrown out years ago. At weekends this is cooking something, cleaning something I haven’t cleaned for a while, tidying cupboards and – coming soon – I’m going to paint my office. I’m not 100% strict with this. Yesterday (a Thursday) I didn’t feel like doing anything work-related so I rearranged my kitchen.

This is how I’ve been structuring my days and, although I feel I’m still pretty much in holiday/retirement mode, a Twitter conversation this morning led me to reflect on what I have actually done and I was quite surprised. I’ve done a lot without realising it because the reality is that my work has ground to a halt and I’ve more time than I’ve ever had at my disposal.

So what have I done?

• I’ve attended a 5-day virtual conference (BP20) and add-on event
• I’ve finally put the finishing touches to my website revamp
• I’ve watched weekly French wine webinars
• I’ve written an article
• I’ve worked on a committee handover
• I’ve finished reading my backlog of Decanter magazines
• I’ve renewed my subscription to Marie France magazine
• I’ve sorted out my finances and pension
• I’ve read as much as I can about the Covid situation in my specialist areas
• I’ve cleaned cupboards
• I've switched energy supplier 
• I’ve totally rearranged my kitchen
• I’ve made a face mask
• And finally I’ve done a lot of thinking.

Some of these are small achievements and not all are business-related but they’re still very important to me. After I rearranged my kitchen yesterday it felt like I was cooking in a brand-new kitchen with so much space. And the bonus? I realised I’d not only cleared space in my cupboards, I’d cleared space in my head.

                                                          Clear kitchen, clear head

If you look back on the past few weeks you too will probably realise that you’ve achieved more than you realised. Even if it is keeping a sourdough starter alive or not murdering your children or partner.

I took a similar step back about ten years ago when I was feeling totally overwhelmed by agency work, increasingly tight deadlines and falling rates. When I did, I realised I had done quite a bit to form the basis of a move into a specialisation and towards better clients. Writing this has taken me back to the presentation I gave at the ITI conference in Newcastle, the message of which was that you can always do small things to move your business forward if the time’s not right for big investment.

Last on my list was thinking. I’m not one to jump into things with two feet at the best of times so, true to form, I’ve decided to take a step back, analyse the situation and think about how I might move forward. I’m lucky that the UK government is providing the self-employed with some financial support that will give me breathing space to think about the future.

There are so many uncertainties, especially because I work for a lot of small direct clients. Will my clients survive the crisis? If they do survive will they continue to export? For some of them their income will have taken a hit and perhaps even stopped completely. How long will it be before they have a budget for translation again?

I’ve made it my mission to find out as much as I can about how Covid has affected their industries and think about how I can fit into their future. If theatre companies can’t perform live, will they go online and find themselves in front of international audiences? If they do, will they require translations? The food and drink industry has benefited hugely from off-trade sales (takeaways and deliveries) but that has mainly been local. Now they’ve tested the water locally will they be tempted to ship to new English-speaking markets?

Attending the virtual BP20 conference also played its part. For half a day for four days I was ‘thinking business’ again. There were sessions by Chris Durban, Tony Parr and Ros Schwartz about things we could do during a lull in business. And Sarah Silva’s talk on fearless follow-up was a useful reminder that we really do need to follow-up quotes and contacts, sometimes up to six times. Most of us would feel uncomfortable doing this but Sarah gave us compelling reasons for why, if done properly, it didn’t constitute harassment.

Everyone’s situation is different and none of us have experienced anything like Covid-19 before. It’s stressful in many ways but if you do find yourself with more time on your hands just now maybe a few baby steps will help keep your business on track for when the economic situation becomes clearer?  Or – the opposite extreme – if your normally silent house is packed with kids and partners trying to work and home school, it might be reassuring to know that not everyone is making sourdough, doing five exercise classes a day and marketing like mad to snare new clients.