Creative play: folding a little book

Make a tiny folded book out of a single piece of paper, with no stitching at all – just a magic bit of folding. These tiny books inspire all sorts of uses: writing flash fiction, a series of haiku, a week of daily doodles or tiny poems, pretty to-do lists for a particular week or as a regular reuseable reminder, and if you turn them inside out, they become a dual perspective on something, or a secret story underlying a story. You can also use them to decorate your Christmas tree!

The video shows you how to make them and the written instructions are underneath.

How to make a little folded book

Some people prefer written instructions, but for this one watching the video is going to be much easier! When my mum first taught me these, she tried to explain it to me over the phone and I nearly lost my mind with bewilderment before we had the bright idea of switching to video. So if you're struggling to follow the instructions... switch to the video above.

You'll need... an A4 piece of paper; scissors.

• fold the paper in half vertically, then open it up
• fold the paper in half horizontally, then open it up
• turn the paper over
• fold the short sides into the middle fold, then open it up
• fold the paper in half on the short middle fold and cut horizontally to the first set of folds
• open your paper and gently tug on either side of the cut to open it like a mouth
• as you pull, the folds you made earlier will slide into place to create a star shape with four spokes - those are your pages
• sharpen all the creases
• fold all the pages onto one side and press down to sharpen the creases some more

Creative play: sewing a little book

The second little creative-play video is how to handsew a little book – a very useful skill for whisking together a little book and another creatively soothing thing to do. I'm inviting students on the Creative Play workshop on 2 August to make a little blank book as optional prep for the workshop, and it's a lovely thing for any writer to be able to do. For the workshop, we'll be using just two sheets of paper folded over. You can use as many as you like, up to about 8 sheets of paper. (More than that gets tricky to fold and to cut through.) The video shows you how and instructions are beneath, for those who prefer that.

How to sew a little book

You will need... paper; a needle; thread; scissors.

• Fold your paper in half, and pierce five holes along the spine, evenly spaced. (If you have a thicker stack of paper, you can push your needle's eye into a cork, to create a makeshift awl.) 
• Measure the thread twice the length of the spine plus a bit extra for tying. 
• Thread your needle and push through the middle hole, leaving a small length of thread sticking out for tying with later. 
• On the outside of the spine, go up to the next hole and back through, then on the inside up to the top hole and back through. 
• Repeat in the reverse order to go back down the booklet, to the middle, and repeat on the bottom half.
• Finally, tie the two pieces of thread together, either with a knot or a bow. The tied bit of the book can go on the outside or the inside.

How to make yourself a book thing

The last post talked about how important it is to celebrate our writing achievements ourselves: we need the celebration for new creative energy and we can't afford to depend on other people for it. The most exciting achievement for a writer is often holding the finished book - but that does depend on other people, plus the time between finishing a story and holding the published book can easily take two years or more. The solution: make yourself a book thing, now. Something you can hold, hug, lick.