The imparting or exchanging of information

 I talked somewhat about how good the communication has been between my cover artist and myself. That's probably an oversimplification, because his posts on social media really outline how much he works on all aspects of his process. This refers to how hard he works, but also how well. This next cover will be the sixth cover of eight, and I feel very fortunate that we've been able to keep things together for years at this point, given the consistently increasing amount of opportunities that he gets, year after year, as he earns more exposure and recognition. I feel very confident I will be one of those people who might say "I knew him back when," and people may not even believe me. 

In regards to process, things were very sloppy for the first cover. Our language wasn't very synced, nor did he have a great idea of what he needed from me to begin producing, nor did I have a way to really understand how my own words percolated into his artwork. I showed a potential reader the cover just last week, and there was the perfunctory "oh, this is cool," but there was a lot of potential we couldn't touch for so many reasons. 

Fast forward to now

Before heavy detail work gets committed to, we have a back and forth, about what I want and why and how it's supposed to feel. I use my words, because that's what I have, and he uses sketching to ask "do you mean something like this?" and he gives me some explanation about what the various elements are, might be, his vision, accompanied by a sketch so I know what he is understanding from what I said. 

Once upon a time, when I was with a publisher, each author got a form to fill out to be given to the cover artist. It asked questions like "what do the main characters look like?" and "what is the setting of the novel" and these, I realized later, were meant to convey physical description and to provide background ideas. In the case of that organization, the execution of this left much to be desired: in many situations, it became a splicing of stock photography that made me think of the first Mortal Kombat video game. But coming full circle, those are some of the same questions that are pertinent for this process. But in addition to those questions there are things like "what is the relationship between the main characters" and "does any character have any defining characteristics" because that can account for small but important things like posture, facial expression, lighting, and color. 

"I like your instinct with the glowing chain. I support the background, because the setting is definitely urban. Something feels lacking in the character posing. David does have a gravity, and Victoria among others are somewhat trapped in that pull, but David is also bound himself, and doesn't realize it. Of course, I'm not sure how to get that across...." is what I said

"Beautiful!" was his reply "You've sparked something in my mind," and it took me a few covers before I could zero in on that being my target focus. I had this dream that my cover artist would read my book and be able to convey visually what I only had words to describe, but in reading, I wanted them to hear what I was trying to say. It didn't occur to me that I could just say it, and by saying it, access the part of a visual artist's ability to use their ability to create metaphor out of imagery.

It feels so simple in retrospect, communication. And I guess it is, at the end of the day. Except it is an exchange, giving and receiving. And in that there lies the difficulty. Things change, very often, when they pass through all of our filters, personal, cultural, psychological, emotional. Difficulties occur all the time because of the friction between what was given and what was accepted. I practice communication all day in my day job, and I get a lot of positive feedback at how well I do it, and yet there is considerable evidence that I have a lot of work yet to do.

But what I was trying to say is that the work continues, and that I'm proud of it, happy at how far its come, and looking forward to what comes next.