The signature pages for the limited edition of Subterranean 2 arrived the other day, all 500 of em. I spent two sessions putting my John Hancock on the dotted line.
I envy people who dash out some distinctive, elegant scrawl. Not only does it look all grownup and fancy when they do it, but they can get through that stack of signature pages in about ten minutes. But something in me doesn’t understand a signature that doesn’t look like the name it represents. My signature clearly says Steven R. Boyett. I think maybe I’m unimaginative.
My signature is also laughably ornate. I sign it very slowly, and if I think about it too hard I swear to god my hand mutinies and I make some mistake. It takes forever for me to get through these pages.
In my twenties my signature was hilariously over-the-top girlie. It had loops and curlicues and looked like some kind of wireframe sculpture of a rollercoaster. It took me about a day and a half to sign it. Then I did my first stack of signature pages, for Dave Schow’s Silver Scream anthology. It took me about four hours to sign 500 pages and my left hand was killing me by the end of it. That was the end of that: I set out to change my signature.
What I ended up with looked a lot different and was faster to sign, but still light years from some quick and distinctive scrawl. Oh, well.