Rules Concerning the Book of Deleriums

Notebooks and sketchbooks and diaries have always fascinated me. Sylvia Plath's journals have always resonated me with me more than her actual poems and novels. I am constantly buying notebooks and sketchbooks, all with the intention of actually finishing them. Usually, the 'flow' of the book in question becomes a matter of some concern to me (a less than pleasing drawing, a noticeable abscence between poems) and I will, inevitably, buy another one, and start again... Part of the reason for this is that I see these books as an end in themselves, rather than a means to producing something outside of the book.
All of my sketchbooks are given names, often prosaic 'Book of Summer' (and what happens when summer has ended, and autumn began? Off to Clarke's Stationers...). More often I prefer slightly more convoluted names 'Liber Tenebrae' or 'The Tarot of the Investigators'. When it is an art book, I have a very ritualised way of working through the book. After deciding on how many pages I need for a list of titles -the contents page, if you like, I count the remaining number of pages in the book. Then I half these pages, and take the page in the middle (if an odd number) or the page which is closest to the beginning than the end. This will be the first page I draw on. After finishing this drawing, writing the title in the contents page, along with date started and finished, I work on the second drawing. For this, I take the second half of the book, and take the middle page from there. For the third drawing, I take the first half, and use that middle page. Then, in the blank pages between the first and second drawing, I take the middle page there. After that, the middle page between the third and first drawing, then the middle page between the second drawing and the end of the book. Everything halves and halves and halves, until, finally, the last drawing of the book is the first page after the list of titles...
This method of working appeals to a slightly neurotic mind. I like the convoluted ritual aspect of it, and by using the book as a whole (backwards, forwards, flipping across the pages like some kind of paper time-traveller) the book becomes to be seen as a whole, rather than just a collection of drawings in the same place. It is rather like working on a novel than a series of short stories.
Another reason I do it is that, when the book is finished (and I have got, at least, close before...) the selection of drawings is non-linear. As you go through the book in the more traditional fashion of beginning to end, you flip from, say a drawing done in September to one in June, to one in November. There seems both a randomness and an order to it. Pictures similar to each other, by dint of one being done after another, are split. If you go through a period of bad drawings, they are scattered. Likewise with pieces you are more pleased with. A sketchbook shuffle. Randomness which is only random because it adheres to some form of order.
As I said though, I don't think I have ever finished such a book. a piece I cannot stand pops up, or some natural disaster strikes (the spilling of coffee on water-soluble ink seems to be a common one).
Ah well.
Anyway, I've started a new book, this one called 'The Book of Deleriums'. Aside from the rules dictating the order of drawings, I have introduced some new rules.
1) All drawings must be finished, no matter how terrible.
and
2) No drawings may be torn out (another bad habit of mine).
Well, we'll see how it goes. Quite pleased with my first drawing (not yet halfway through) which is a good start. However, there was a near disaster yesterday involving a pint of milk with the top badly screwed on and my bag...
So, we'll see how it goes.
66 drawings.
And each one finished and titled.
Seems a long journey for one book to survive.
Dreams, nightmares, desires, memories, fevers...
A book of deleriums...