Two Things I Never Knew I'd Fall in Love With

I was thinking the other day about certain things I've done in the past year or two that are very "new" and different for me as a writer.

~Writing song lyrics for my musician sister
~Working with my artist sister-in-law on creating a new book cover

Both of these things were never really things I had thought about much before. Sure, I'd written poetry before, and I'd thought that eventually all my books would need covers... but neither of these was high on my list of "things I'd love to do."

Well, these are now both on my list of "things I LOVE to do."

Why?

Because writing music and creating a piece of art are both things that I have no talent for. I can't write music. I can't even make up convincing tunes for my 2 year old when she asks me to "sing the milk song" ... a song that, as far as I know, doesn't exist, so I have to make up on the fly music and lyrics for it. This is generally a huge hit with her, but I am intelligent enough to realize that is only because I am her Mommy.

And yet, it is really fun to be a part of both, even if only in small ways. I discovered a year or two ago, that one of the most amazing things in the world is to write a set of lyrics for my sister and then get that set of lyrics back from her on a CD in a beautiful melody, sung in her gorgeous voice, accompanied by various instruments.

What I write is just a poem. What she creates with those words is Music.


With the cover of my book. I gave Angelina a general description of the image I had in my head for the cover. "Guy standing with his back to us, holding a sword. Mountains. Clouds. A dragon somewhere." (ok, I gave her a few more details than that... but not many).

What she painted for me was a masterpiece. An amazingly beautiful, intricately detailed image that looked like she had snipped it neatly out of my imagination and placed it on the canvas.

What I had in my head was just an image. What she created from that image was Art.


And although I'm certain I'm not the easiest person to work with (because, 1) we live 2700 miles apart, and 2) we've gotten into the teeny tiny nit-picky details of font color, and logo placement...) I hope she knows I am only nit-picky about THOSE details because I don't want anything to detract from the painting behind the title.