Editorial

Citation

Evans, S. (2016), "Editorial", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 29 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-12-2015-2325

Editorial

Article Type: Literature and insights From: Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Volume 29, Issue 1.

Colour me gone

If you gaze into bookstore windows lately, you might feel that books will soon not only all be devoid of text but also require colouring in. Tempted? It must be like reverting to childhood, and you can even go outside the lines if you own the book in question.

It is clear that there have been enough slippery dips and sand pits and gyms at work places. Some employers are providing staff with colouring books in order to reduce stress. Surely, Apple or Google and other big computer companies will now be engaging consultants to discover which kind of pictures have the most beneficial effects on their staff. You can choose books on gardens, sea creatures, cities, tattoos, cats, wild animals, fetishes (do not ask), fractals, trains, comic characters, Star Wars, and just about anything else you could think of. One wag suggested that a Game of Thrones colouring book would only need shades of red. For blood, geddit?

Apart from the pleasure of beautiful illustrations awaiting your personal touch, there is the promise of mindfulness and relaxation.

Pyschologist Joel Pearson says it is about occupying the visual-spatial part of the brain and that timely activity of this kind can block the consolidation of anxious thoughts (Kimmorley, 2015). Consulting neuropsychologist and neuroscientist Dr Stan Rodski says, "there are three key elements – repetition, pattern and detail – that prompt positive neurological responses in participants’ and this is calming (Story Carter, 2015). Educational psychologist Dr Mandy Ellis claims that, like doodling, it will let people "free up enough brain space to allow for new learning and pay attention, in a more relaxed state" (in CareerOne, 2015, p. 4).

Apart from the dubious technical specifics of "brain space", what could be wrong with results like extra learning, alertness and relaxation?

It is a problematic situation for a lover of storytelling, though. How will the suspenseful moments of a good blockbuster be maintained in a colouring-in book? Where will we find the wry uses of meaning we learn to expect from a carefully crafted sentence? Whither plot development and developing complexities of character? No, you will still have to go elsewhere for those because colouring books are like black-and-white snapshots, whether pretty or grim; they are static.

It is not known how long the fad will last, of course. I’ve read guesses of three or four years. On the other hand, an entrepreneurial kind of person might be able to extend that by moving on to niche interests. What I have in mind here is the different professions and occupations. There could be books for doctors to while away the hours, some for lawyers, and, yes, some for accountants. Maybe academics too?

Another idea beyond colouring in? How about going backwards? With the right inks, you could start with images someone else has coloured and then progressively erase the colours to reveal new combinations. Perhaps too dull.

There is a better idea that may reap dividends and it involves going back to texts for entertainment. Imagine that you could take ordinary corporate reports and obscure parts of them to tell a very different story. That is the essential idea behind A Humament: A Treated Victorian Novel, what is known as a treated book, by Tom Phillips. It is based on an 1892 Victorian novel A Human Document by W.H. Mallock, and the project’s been going very successfully for over 45 years now with Phillips collaging, defacing, masking and generally playing with the original so that new narratives appear in each edition.

There is also the Newspaper Blackout project in which people block out text in an article so that the remaining words offer a pithy statement (Newspaper Blackout, online). That would seem to offer fun for those of us looking for a distraction from the myriad colours around us. And think what you could do to the abstracts in a conference programme during a boring presentation if you had a thick, black pen.

So, colour or words? I leave it to you. Maybe the answer is some of both.

In this issue, Matt Bamber wonders why we cannot take a more gracious path in treating the submission of papers to journals when they do not appear ready for publication. Also hoping for a better way but on a much bigger scale, Lelys Maddock longs for honest and responsible corporate accounting reports that face up to impending tragedies rather than glossing or ignoring them. Both issues involve human behaviour.

Your own creative contributions can be submitted via ScholarOne, and your email correspondence is always welcome, of course, at: mailto:steve.evans@flinders.edu.au

Acknowledgements

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal (AAAJ) welcomes submissions of both research papers and creative writing. Creative writing in the form of poetry and short prose pieces is edited for the Literature and Insights Section only and does not undergo the refereeing procedures required for all research papers published in the main body of AAAJ. Author guidelines for contributions to this section of the journal can be found at: www.emeraldinsight.com/products/journals/author_guidelines.htm?id=aaaj

Steve Evans -Literary Editor

References

CareerOne (2015), "Colourful way to stop brain fade", The Advertiser, 31 October, p. 4

Kimmorley, S. (2015), "Here’s why adults are suddenly obsessed with these colouring-in books", Business Insider Australia, 23 August, available at: www.businessinsider.com.au/heres-why-adults-are-suddenly-obsessed-with-colouring-in-books-2015-8 (accessed 3 November 2015)

Newspaper Blackout (online), available at: http://newspaperblackout.com/ (accessed 3 November 2015)

Story Carter, J. (2015), "The science behind adult colouring books", RN Books and Arts, 4 September, available at: www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/booksandarts/why-are-australian-adults-drawn-to-colouring-in-books/6750808 (accessed 3 November 2015)

Further reading

Wikipedia. "A Humument", available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Humument (accessed 3 November 2015)

Phillips, T. "A Humument", available at: www.tomphillips.co.uk/humument (accessed 3 November 2015)