I am days away from taking the Honesty Project to the Edinburgh Festival. This is it. This is when I get to see if honesty scales. Laggan Cottage was more successful than I dared hope for. People do pay. I am humbled by the number of readers who kindly jump the barriers I’ve put in their way. Think about it: You finish a book. You enjoyed it. Instead of moving on, you pause, go back to the beginning and read the instructions again. You get the chequebook, write it out and address the envelope, find or buy a stamp and go out to put the payment in the mail. Others choose to settle online and go out of their way to do so and, easy as paying by sms is, that method of payment is still an extra step that goes against the natural order of things. And yet people do – enough of them that, if I can scale it up, by this time next month everything I’ve worked for will start to take root.

Before Laggan, it was all theory. Now it is fact. I was told by so many well-meaning individuals that what I was doing was crazy – that the world is populated by the lazy and dishonest, that there would never be enough who would take the time and trouble to jump through those hoops when no one was watching them. I admit that there are still a million ways to fail. I never take anything for granted. At Laggan, I would sometimes go for days without seeing anyone but in Edinburgh – at the festival – there will be thousands within shouting distance every minute of the day. I will be a small voice in a sea of talent. I could be ignored, the book lost amidst a cacophony of art screaming for attention. The average age of the crowd will be younger. Is that good? Bad? Do they still read? Will they get it?

I will soon know. The aim is to roll out Dreamwords in the thousands over the coming weeks, to talk to as many readers as possible, to find out if the microcosm of Edinburgh in August is full of enlightened art-lovers or if the very remoteness of Laggan lent itself to self-select honest people that would enjoy the book.

Soon.