Cover art and works in progress

As I understand it, some people are visual thinkers and other people aren't.

If I'm honest, I'm not quite sure what this means.

Do the people who are visual thinkers think entirely in pictures? Or only partly? If they are thinking about something invisible, what do they see?

I think I am a visual thinker, in as much as I do think very visually. So I tried out feeding into my mind "Air" and "God" to see what came up. And I found that I saw those words written down in my mind's eye. I could see the words very large in Times New Roman type font. Dark grey with a white background, on a rectangular piece of paper (landscape not portrait).

My husband Tony is writing a novel — he has written two books, and both were stories in a way: one was the story of the time he walked the Camino pilgrimage route (Taking My God for a Walk), and the other was the story of his working life as a publisher of Christian books (They'll Never Read That). They are both easy to read like stories are, but of course these were things he actually did, they aren't made up, so what he's writing at the moment is his first work of fiction — and he has at least two more planned, he never does things by halves!

So sometimes he talks to me about how he's writing his book — not what he's writing, it's death to a story to share that before it's told.

And the other day he was telling me how he plans and structures and creates and develops and adds twists und so weite, to create a scene — then he asked me about how I go about writing mine.

And all I could think of was that I just go to the place through my imagination, and I watch the people and listen to them, then I come out again and write down what they said and what they did.

So I suppose that's visual thinking, isn't ? 

But I noticed he said at one point yesterday that when he got stuck on resolving part of his story, a very minor character had stepped out of the shadows and fulfilled the rôle. So, is that visual thinking too, or just a visual metaphor — an image — for thinking that wasn't necessarily visual?

I'm going to have to ask Grace (my daughter) to read this and comment — she's very good at knowing about this sort of thing.

Anyway, I think I must be a visual thinker because I do see in my mind's eye pretty much everything I think about.

Let me give you an example. Before I wrote St Luke's Little Summer, I was finding it increasingly difficult to see the men at St Alcuins and the place. And I was sad, because I missed them. Then one day I saw something like the top of a rubbish bin (but sideways on like a picture frame) in my mind's eye, and it was perhaps 18 inches from side to side and made of beige plastic. A bit like one of these apertures would be if you looked straight down onto it.

And beige, and square. Floating in mid-air. And there was a tough, thick membrane stretched across the opening, not added on but part of it. And I was thinking about the men at St Alcuins and William in particular, and he had pushed his arm through this membrane — there must have been a space to do that at the centre, because it wasn't broken, and it stretched the membrane a bit to extend his arm through — and he said, "We are still here, but you can't see us any more." Which was part of how I knew the series was finishing.

That sounds like a dream, doesn't it, but it's how I think (though I don't mean it wasn't real, but it's how it arrived in my mind). Impressions come into my mind. Sometimes they are only words and then I see the words, or sometimes like that odd thing with the arm, they are visual and have words going with them. Is that visual thinking?

Anyway, what I was intending to tell you is that because my mind is very visual in its activities, I find the cover of a book is one of the most exciting parts about it.

I love the bit where it's time to ask our artists for the cover art, and then wait to see what they have made.

My last book in the Hawk & Dove series, The Light of One Lamp, has been written and edited and the text has gone off to Jonathan to be formatted — but he was away in Copenhagen when we sent it, so I believe he's expecting to work on it this week once he's properly back and got his breath. Then we have to proofread and amend any errors, then it'll be good to go.

But while Jonathan was in Denmark, the cover art came through. This was very good of our artists because they have a lot on at the moment. As well as their usual day to day work of letter-cutting at a stone masonry, their workshop at home is filled with queuing projects — two large statues of Our Lady in mid-transformation, a small herd of Gothic-looking reliquaries (very tall with loads of long pointy bits like gnarled stalagmites) that need repairing and gilding, a huge picture frame to be gilded, a taxidermied scene inside a case that needs cleaning and the background refreshing, and two busts of saints to be repainted. But they still managed to shoehorn in my book cover art.

What they sent through to me looks like this.

Which is perfect.

They still have to do the watercolour for the background coloration, and they say it's going to be blue and gold this time. I always trust their instincts which are pretty much flawless because they locate themselves in the Holy Spirit as well as being highly skilled and with a very good eye.

So all that's coming along well and I hope will all soon be ready to publish — though when it comes to publishing a book 'soon' doesn't mean 'tomorrow'. We do everything at warp speed, and it still feels like ages. But we can do in two months what would take 18 months in the world of traditional publishing. Anyway, I'll get back to you about it when it's all up and running, but I thought you might like to see the cover art, because I find it one of the most exciting parts.

I have no idea what my husband's cover art will be like — his book's about werewolves! He'll have a different artist, because my work aligns with the work of my artists, and I don't think his does particularly. I mean, they could draw you anything, but an artist's work has a spirit, doesn't it, a character, a personality, that has to sing in harmony with the story.