Telling A New Story

Using discarded books to find stories across their pages

The day he handed the flowers to her, she was looking ahead instead of at him.

About the project:

There are piles of neglected, damaged, and otherwise discarded books to be found in every library, book box, used bookstore, and avid reader’s home. They accumulate because throwing books away feels inherently wrong, so they’re left to sit and quietly amass. Faced with a daunting stack of such books, a burst of curiosity and creative inspiration started me ripping pages out and pasting them at random onto a large sheet of newsprint paper. The line written/discovered above was the first story my mind saw once I put the gluestick down.

This post catalogs my first experience with this method of creation. Already I have many ideas about how it can be further developed…more to come…