Odd week, this. I started out with a rush of enthusiasm with the pizza post, then faded around midweek, finally ending yesterday and today with a flurry of writing on my new project. My old project is done enough that I can write my query, send it off into space, and hear nothing. Since I fully expect to hear nothing I’d almost rather write it on a long narrow ribbon, tie it to a model rocket, and fire it into the sky with my words fluttering behind like Tibetan prayer flags. Or embalm it in mercury and fire it into the sun, a real Viking burial for a book I’ve spent three years writing and refining that’ll most likely never see the light of day. Well, I enjoyed writing it, researching, and I still enjoy reading it, getting drawn into the story when I’m supposed to be line editing.
So what’s the new work? I’ll tell you in three years when I’m writing the query for it and getting ready to give it its own Viking burial. But I can let slip that it’s great fun, something that involves almost as much dreaming and sketching as writing. I’m very tempted to make it an illustrated book, even if it just has plans and technical drawings, something I am able to do given my profession. The more I get into it I’m reminded of one of my favorite books, The Three Policemen by William Pène Du Bois. Fellow blogger Amanda Crawford wrote an entry about this book with some scans of the great illustrations, and I’d like to show this one, which always gets my gears turning. Who wouldn’t want to sail aboard this craft?
Writer, architect, father, husband.
Love to see more detail of that illustration. Your kind of book–dreams illustrated.