This scribble is one of many ideas for the book cover design for my third novel, Drinking from the Fishbowl the manuscript is so close to “done” I can just about scream! So the doodling on yellow legal pad paper is part of the process. I’m looking at the bedraggled manuscript that I’ve puttered through since the beginning of August and wonder if this is “it”. Can I really start thinking about how I want it to look?

I ask myself: Should I comb through it one more time?


When people ask me, “So what is your book about?” I tell them… “It’s about dreams and realities…” I let it settle in what that means, and then I say “We dream about all this stuff we plan to do, what we want to “be”, but the reality of those grand plans never quite turn out as expected…reality can be disappointing…or unexpected…”
The first line goes like this:

…and then he asked, “Why do you want to be a poet, Georgia Sullivan?”

It’s hard to believe it’s become this…it grew from the smatterings of notes scribbled on scraps of paper, post-it notes, and long hand passages in a salt n’ pepper notebook as far back as 2000, back when I had no idea where it was going and I was getting to know the characters, now it’s this… an untidy pile of paper, and now I’m planning a book cover…  I love the process of making a book, from those first scribbles to the first draft, and all the subsequent drafts, the frustrations, the surprises, the doubts, and the certainties. The editing, the blood bath of the red pen, the cutting of words, sentences, and the obliteration of entire chapters…I can’t say for sure when it will be available…should I do it before Christmas or wait until 2016…my first reader has settled down to read it… (she’s been my first reader for all of them, she read this one in its second draft infancy.)

I think I’ll stick with Sabon for a font…I should make more scribbles…should I do a painting? Incorporate the scribbles in a flood of watercolor washes and rice paper? I know when I finally turn it over to my Fred to design the guts and cover, he will make it beautiful…unique. (I love making my books.)