There is nothing like it. You work and you wait. You work and you wait. You put in long nights and scary days. Problem after problem comes up. Then the final day arrives. It’s your last chance to proofread and check your design work before giving the okay to print.
That’s how my dear author friend Linda Williams and I spent our winter publishing her beautiful memoir Through The Widows Window. I did the cover art, my daughter Ashley did the cover design, and we spent those winter months battling our way through the publishing world, until finally, one rainy spring morning, it arrives. There’s nothing like that feeling you get when you are about to see your finished work for the first time. For such a long time the finished product was only a picture in my mind. I knew exactly how I wanted it to look and feel. My painting was going to be printed on 250 books and I so wanted it to be just as I imagined it.
Linda opened the box and oh my goodness, there it sat. I carefully picked it up. The soft feel of the matte finish I’d chosen was exactly what I wanted. The tone and hue of the back cover was perfect – just like my daughter designed it. It looked so nice when she and I did it on the computer, but I was nervous about the print version.
That was our proof copy in which we still made some changes in the text, but my cover, my part of the “baby”, was perfect. There’s nothing like that feeling.
Throughout this project I was full of doubts about doing the cover art. I’m not an artist. What business do I have even trying this? But something inside me just pushed on. Once I get a vision in my mind of something I want to make or build, it’s like nothing can stop me – even me. I have a book of my own I wrote and illustrated a few years ago, but I put it away in a box. I all but decided I wasn’t a writer. I wasn’t an illustrator. I don’t have formal schooling to do this…blah, blah, blah…mind chatter. But now, after bringing this cover to fruition, the finished product of my own book is sitting in the back of my mind, moving toward the front of my mind, getting closer everyday to me actually taking it out of the box.
Last night I was watching Nashville. They sang a song that said:
If God made you a vessel, if He gave you something special, it’s not yours to throw away.
Wow. Sitting here looking at this book, holding it, all done. My vision come to life…maybe I have no right to keep the book I wrote hidden away in a box…
And so, as another day goes by, there’s nothing like the feeling you get when you finally hold what was only, for such a long time, a picture in your mind, and…I have written.
My local friends…you are all invited to attend…
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