Cover Art

I’m nearing the final stages of revision on this book and it’s time for the parts I like least – proofreading, formatting, and cover art. I got into this whole writing thing because I like painting pictures with words. I like figuring out where the story will go and envisioning exotic places and most of all, never, never having to actually do any visual art of any kind. It’s not my forte.

Generally, I’m a “more is more” person. I want to buy all the pictures to hang on my walls. I want to use all the colors when I paint. I want to put all my ideas down. And when I’m writing, I can generally do that. (Or, I can put them into a second document to use for the next book!) But cover art is hard. You want to make it look interesting. You want it to have some visual appeal. You want it to have some relation to the story you’re telling. I can lay those things out and have absolutely no idea how to achieve them. Honestly, I should just hire one of the many qualified people who exist for this purpose. And, in the end, maybe I will. But unfortunately, I have a general “How hard could it be?” outlook on life.

This outlook has helped me achieve many things. Without it, I would never have gotten through college, let alone grad school. I would have given up the idea of ever becoming a parent. I definitely wouldn’t have taken on an amorphous semi-career while also spending way too much time volunteering and somehow keeping our family fed and reasonably well-cared for. I’ve written three (3!) books just because I never stopped to think that maybe I couldn’t.

At the same time, I’ve had more than one DIY project that involved stopping after about half an hour to actually look up the steps that I was supposed to be doing. I’ve bitten off more than I can chew more times than I can count, and poor Forrest spends a fair amount of his life helping me dig out of situations I impulsively got myself into.

I will say this, though. I have found myself far more capable than I would have imagined. And I am the kind of person who learns by doing rather than reading. So, maybe I’m condemned to spend the rest of my life getting myself into and out of scrapes.

So I’ll take a crack at the cover, try a few things and we’ll see how it works out. And in the end, maybe it’ll be better than I imagined. Or maybe it’ll be wonderfully done by someone who is very much not me.