A few years ago I taught myself to self-publish books, not because I had a novel in mind or even a thought to publish my own story in full, which I will do one day. No, I was just curious, the result of being trained as an engineer I suppose. The curiosity bit was learning how to do almost everything to do with the publishing of my words - writing, doing the digital typesetting bit - creating text and graphics that use available print surfaces efficiently - designing the front and back covers, providing the required publishing info, training to think how you would embed advertising etc. As with everything in the "making" field it pays to understand how to do it yourself - it opens the mind to countless possibilities and saves cash at the same time.
Since then I have self published three creativity books, all of which are available on Amazon.
My "We are many people" Colouring Book: My green "We are many people" colouring book was my first perfectly imperfect colouring book for adults. It consists of 25 unique drawings for you to colour - raw, hand drawn images .... each drawing suggesting a different story for you to tell. The way you apply your colours will create different stories, just watch. At the beginning of each section is a selection of quotes that helped me in good times and in not so good times, quotes that inspired me. I hope you will enjoy them as well. The drawings to colour are set in the middle of a page, with a wide border, allowing you to extend the drawings and to develop the stories in any way your imagination takes you.
My "We are many people" Colouring Book and Journal: My pink "We are many people" was my second, it combines a colouring book with a journal, the sort of book that's really good to have in your bag when travelling along with a set of colouring pens.
My " Be a creativity explorer" Creativity Workbook to exercise the imagination: My latest is a Creativity Workbook, the aim of this one is to give your imagination a real gym work out. This is very important because, like most parts of our bodies, it benefits from regular exercise - innovative prowess is no different. If you keep exercising these parts of your mind you will not be surprised when you start turning something upside down to see whether it could be used for another purpose - then it really gets you going and all you want to do is invent things and change the world, the "why not" or "what could" becomes a normal way of looking at things and situations, even problems to solve. So, in my Creativity Workbook I give you work out exercises in:
creative writing through keeping a journal, a great way of creating short stories about your day - that actually helps builds the skills you need to become a new author, yes it does, and;
collage making exercises, a way of telling stories that increases the IMPACT of the story because not all of us, or all messages, are best communicated just by the written word (see what I mean below with my Youtube movie about my green colouring book), and;
colouring including colouring-in exercises - don't think that this is just for children, it's not, it's also about learning about colour language, learning which colours work well together, which don't, how density of particular colours can change the whole feel of the image - so if you want to become an artist who works with the colours of life, colouring-in is a great learning programme.
YouTube: You can take a look at the content of my "We are many people" Colouring Book and my YouTube movie by clicking here Learning how to create your own YouTube movie making also opens up all sorts of possibilities for multi-dimensional story-telling, it's the world we live in.
My three books are available to buy via Amazon.co.uk