This week on my blog, I spotlight the people who helped me as I wrote and prepared my book for publication.
When I realized the memoir I had written was actually going to be published, when I really let myself believe that it was going to happen, I started thinking about what the cover would look like.
I read memoirs quite often, and I don’t pay much attention to the covers, because I have my tried-and-true authors. If Anne Lamott wrote it, I’m reading it, regardless of the packaging. Joan Didion, same. Tina Fey, Mindy Kaling, and Amy Poehler are all famous enough to put their faces on their book covers, but even if that wasn’t the case, I’d still pick up their work.
Should I have my cover drawn? Should it just be a simple graphic design? I don’t remember when or how I envisioned what finally ended up being the cover, but I know it wouldn’t have happened without my good friend Ashley Crawford.
Here’s some background on the photo: one of my fondest memories of being a student at BYU is taking a blanket out to the lawn to study, but I often ended up writing in my journal. The quilt in this photo is one my mom made me when I started my junior year at BYU. The journals in the photo contain most of the source text for my memoir. And the legs there? That’s me.
I explained to Ashley what this looked like in my head, and when I saw the photo, I wondered if, even for a nanosecond, she had special powers to access my brain because this is exactly what I wanted.
In addition to taking the photo for the cover, she also gave me some options for headshots to use on the back of the cover–one of my favorites is on my home page here on the blog. (I used a different one, in color, for the back cover.)
I’m so thrilled with how the cover turned out–front and back–and I hope the contents within live up to the images on the cover.
