The Book

Readers, I am about to let you in on a wonderful secret. What is the secret?

 THE BOOK

The Book is a wonderful-phantasmagorical-everything-but-the-kitchen-sink-this-is-totally-a-run-on-sentence collaboration journal I do with some close friends.  Every day we pass around this notebook around, and to put it simply: we write in it. We draw in it. We pour out our souls through the form of pen ink (preferably Ink Joy) onto these pages. The Book was originally inspired by the book 'Choke' by Diana Lopez. In the book, a couple of friends share a top five lists notebook. We all read this and thought "Hey this would be cool." We did a practice kind of journal for a while, and that one has kind of disappeared. After I did that one, a couple of girls ( who are now two of my best friends) asked if they could do one with us. We weren't very close at the time, but it never at any point was awkward. We hit the ground running

 ( awkwardly of course, none of us are sporty...) That was the first book. Just yesterday actually we were at the mall buying Book edition 4.0. The Book is literally my favorite thing of all time. Want to start a book of your own? Follow these simple steps.

1. Find the People.

You probably need kind of weird somewhat creative people. These people don't have to be super close to you, just whoever you think of during this.

2. Get the supplies

The supplies consist of, of course, a notebook. Pens, food, pictures, collages, it can all go here. Occasionally my group will tape perfume samples to it, and then spend hours sniffing the book. We really don't care that people are staring really suspiciously at the awkward teenage girl smelling her notebook deeply. 

3. Heart Throw-up

This is the easy part. And the fun part. This is the part where your heart literally throws up on the page. Write, draw, be vulnerable, be awesome, be the bomb-dot-com you know you are. This book and all associated with it will accept it. 

And that is Mandarin's simple instructions on "How-To-Change-Your-Life/Start-a-book. Hope you like it.