Friday, December 17, 2010

Procrastination: Thy Name is Rusty

It's true. It doesn't matter how important it is. If I have something to do, no matter how important or urgent, I will put it off.

Why do I do that? I don't know. If I intend to clean, I'll have to piddle on the internet first. If I want to write, I'll have to read just one more chapter before I do. If I want to read, then I'll have to watch a few minutes of TV first. If I have to be go to work, I'll just have to take a picture of the sunrise.

Sigh. It goes on and on. If I set out to take a picture, I'll decide I need to draw a picture to get in the right frame of mind. It's a rare gift, or at least it is on the level I demonstrate it, but man does it have a tendency to throw my life into havoc at times. That's the real reason I struggle with Nanowrimo every year. And it confounds my wife to no end trying to figure out how I can carve out a block of time to write for several hours and come away with 19 words written but a killer guitar riff to show off.

So what has been my diversion today? Well, I set out to write some this evening on one of my always in various stages of editing novels and I starting thinking of titles. My working title was something stupid of course, like, The Dead Man Who Lives... To Die!, or maybe, Ricky's Rockin Rampage of Reclusive Reflexology.  In other words, aside for my love of alliteration - I've got nothing.

So I was thinking on the topic of titles, knowing full well if a miracle occurred and a publisher just waltzed up to my front door and said they'd publish me that they would really not care about what my title was... and even less so about my cover.

But I also harbor a secret desire to be graphic designer. So book covers are totally something I'd dig creating. It seems like folks have homemade covers before they write a single word of prose. Well, to avoid writing this evening I decided to work on a cover of my own. My title still sucks something awful, and I can't really think of how it even applies to what my story is about. Regardless - here it is:

 

So there it is. My attempt at another book cover. I really have a fancy to try a space opera or something hand drawn but something like that would take some time and effort to produce. To make one actually look good would require skills I just don't possess.

But I still think it's fun.

2 comments:

A Beer for the Shower said...

Cool cover. Very intriguing. Definitely something I'd want to pick up and skim through to see what it was about.

As for procrastination... I'll tell you, the only time I ever get good, solid writing done is when I go to the stereotypical coffee shop... not because it's the trendy thing to do, but because there's no Internet (well, no free Internet). Otherwise I'll dink around on the web to get my mind 'warmed up' and end up with 2 hours of stupid videos, irrelevant news stories, and ridiculous pictures. "What did you accomplish today?" the lady will ask. "Uh, I saw a fat guy fall on a treadmill and a cat riding an invisible bike." Damn you, Internet...

Rusty Carl said...

Thanks for the compliment - I'm always looking for one so please don't be shy about tossing them around.

The internet is the bane of my existence. How can I love and hate something so much? I'm pretty sure I'd already have a 31 volume set of my history of the universe complete if I didn't have the internet to distract me.

I'd say the coffee shop was a great idea - But I've tried that before and it ended with me typing for 10 minutes and then deciding to go pee. Of course I couldn't trust the locals to leave my shit alone so I packed everything up first to take it to the bathroom with me.

I came back and set up again only to decide that I needed to order an apple cinnamon bagel. So I packed up again and went to stand in line.

I spent half my time there packing and unpacking my stuff. I got tired of all the work and decided it wasn't for me.