Project C Gains Momentum

This last week, I announced plans for a major book project. Since then, about 200 backers have offered support for the project. Nearly two dozen people have reached out with ideas or information to boot things up.

Visuals are going to play an essential role in this guide. Why? Many otherwise excellent survival, prepping, and homesteading guides just don't offer the foolproof instructions that would make someone without much experience feel confident. They assume a decent amount of background knowledge. They show you the idea of building a rain harvester, wiring solar panels, fixing a bicycle, digging a well, planning out raised beds for a small garden, or packing a bugout bag. But they don't actually show you how to do it every step of the way, and that's one reason a lot of us... don't do it.

Videos help some, but that's exactly the kind of resource that feels fragile now. So, visuals felt like an important thing to nail down early on.

See above. Or I guess I'll just show you again:

That's a quick mockup I made after spending this weekend thinking through the practical and aesthetic aspects of the instructions. They need to be clear, but they also need to look interesting, even fun. I've still got some tweaking to do, but I think we've got the basic look down, and it's something that will work across the guide.

A visual breakdown on how to build a small rain harvester would take quite a few pages. I'm going to try and make one, and I'm going to document the process. I'm also going to discuss how you'd do it with different types of material. I'm going to illustrate all of it, with zooms and closeups. That's the goal.

Over the next week, I'm going to produce some sample pages following this example, using information from posts I've already written. We're going to cover some relatively straightforward topics like packing an emergency bag, choosing winter gear, and using herbal antivirals. These sample pages will probably draw interest from more backers (fingers crossed.) It will also build some momentum for the more complicated projects. They might also look well on a crowdsourcing site.

I've been giving some thought to the title. Also, any kind of fundraising campaign will need a sample cover. How about this?

This feels appropriate. Although some of us manage homesteads and farms, most of us are still tied to the grid in one way or another. We're looking for practical, detailed information about what we can do without bugging out to the woods forever. We want to know what we can do in our homes, our apartments, our backyards. We want projects we can show our neighbors, our friends, even our landlords.

We're trying to survive on a flickering grid. The skills we build will grow as the grid fades. That's the idea behind this project.

The dumpster fire speaks to me...

This is what we've been living through, and it's what we're going to be living through. It's honest, but it's also funny.

I've got to go on a little trip, but I'm taking my laptop so I can keep gathering up information and making lists of books. When we're back in a couple of days, I'm going to buckle down and get to work on the sample. When those pages are done, I'll post them here for subscribers.

This project has a real shape to it now. It's going to be a ton of work, but it feels doable. It's going to be an informative book. It's going to be detailed. It's going to be visual. It's going to spoonfeed readers, because that's what I would want. It's going to assume readers are starting from basics, but it's not going to talk down to anyone or waste valuable space with padding and posturing. It's going to walk everyone through projects step by step, like you're putting together a piece of furniture.

Above all, it's going to be fun.

Like what you see? Share your thoughts.