Musings of Two Creative Minds

You've just about finished writing your novel and can see the finish line coming up in the distance.  But now you have a new concern to deal with, creating a cover for it.  But what kind of art should you use?  Should it be a photograph, cartoon, an image that evokes feelings from a favorite movie like having several people walking towards the reader like in "The Right Stuff"?  Should it just show an individual who appears in the story, or should it show a scene that's right out of the book? So many questions, right?  And the answer is... I don't know.  Every author has to choose their own path or vision for their work.  It's not an easy thing to do either, I know this.  All I can say is know your audience and what captures their imagination.  Make sure the art speaks to them and makes them want to pick up your work. But this can be difficult sometimes.  Tastes in art changes over the years so I thought it might be fun to demonstrate how the style of

I swear there are days I wish signs like this would appear so I can prepare myself... I'm sure the image above speaks volumes of what's been happening with me in the last week or so.  Too many distractions and problems to deal with and very little of me to go around.  I won't go into great detail but I had a financial crisis thanks to my old health insurance (no I wasn't sick or injured it was a premiums issue) that is finally getting resolved.  My finances are very thin at the moment but will improve shortly so now I can breathe a little easier again.   I also wound up making a major decision on the university front.  I've changed my major from Collaborative Health and Human Services to aiming for a Business Degree.  I'm leaning towards Marketing because there's a much better demand for that field, as well as getting better ideas of how to market my own works in time.   So slowly but surely I've been weathering the storms that have b

Wait I'm the one writing this story!  How did I wind up here? Did you ever lose track of where the book/story you were writing was headed?  If the answer is no, then all I have to say is, "I hate you, now will you teach me your ways oh Master Jedi?" Okay, all kidding aside, this happened to me just recently, and the sad thing was I didn't even realize that I'd lost my plot until I was about third of the way through the first draft. Now, I don't know if it happened because I was writing part of a series and was trying to remember details from the previous books, or because I got too caught up in the characters (both old and new), but I still managed to lose my original plot which was quite embarrassing.  I mean I could've sworn I left on the kitchen table next to my keys, but when I went back the plot wasn't there.  Neither were my keys for that matter, but I'm going to worry about that later, first things first. Up until the point whe