Cover To Be Revealed

This is how the cover of SUPERVISION looks right now: 

Source: http://www.harpercollins.com

 The cover is out of my hands; I wait for it to be placed in them.

I wrote last week of how the process of book publishing is like magic—a similar magic to my child learning to read. Waiting for a cover, another part of the process, is magic too. My book is a blank face. Soon it will have a known face.  

It’s weird to have an idea of a thing and have no idea at the same time. It’s hard to let go of almost everything.

But getting a first novel published is a huge exercise in letting go, I am realizing. You release your book into the world to be considered, accepted or rejected, by agents, by publishers. And then you are constantly releasing it: to editors, readers, reviewers, artists. It’s a balloon that never quite comes back to you.

Which is kinda like the way it came to you.

Art: Banksy. Source: www.stencilrevolution.com

I always feel as if the stories are whispered to me from… somewhere. I do dream stories—and those are the ones that stick, those are ones I finish, those are the ones that demand to be heard and made. The ones that came from… my subconscious, my ancestors, the ether, ghosts?

In that sense, I never feel like they belong to me. I was just the vessel for a time. I was just the mouthpiece. My fingers, with black-painted nails, just worked the keys. In that sense, writers may have more in common with Pearl Curran, Marguerite Du Pont Lee, the Fox Sisters than we thought.

I never expect the story idea, the whisper of a character or image or plot, the writing dream. They always come at inconvenient times: I’m really tired; I don’t have a pen. You can’t force them or expect those dreams to come. But you have to be ready, to rise and find the notebook.

So I am ready to see what is going to be seen. I am trying to let go of expectations and worry. I wait for my book to be shown to me.

I wait for a girl. I hope for a train.