One thing I do to procrastinate on books I should be writing is make fake covers for books I don’t intend to write.
The one above came from a typo: I tried to type “hell yeah” and typed “hell year” instead.
The one below is a manipulation of a book on small business taxes my wife got from the library:
I find this kind of creative lark really freeing and fun and pressure-relieving. It can also lead to new ideas.
I’m reminded of Guided By Voices frontman Bob Pollard, who said:
Back in high school, maybe 4 or 5 people wanted to be in a band, but nobody knew how to play an instrument. So in art class, we’d sit there and make album covers, and the credits, and I’d have the lyrics, and we’d have everything but music. We even made t-shirts for our band. Walked around, and people’d say, “You guys have a band?” “Yeah, yeah, we’ve got a band!” And no one could play anything. So it started out as kind of a fantasy.
When Pollard is writing, he says he often likes to start out with song titles and fake band names, and then write songs for those specific titles and names. (cf. Nathaniel Russell’s Fake Fliers.)
Sometimes I’ll post an image and people will think it’s a book cover, like this quilting collage I made.
More fun: If you watch my friend Wendy MacNaughton’s show, Draw Together, you’ll see a bunch of fake books she made for the set.
I do actually have the book cover ready for the book I need to be writing — now I just have to write it.