Finishing a book can turn into a cascade of endings. I’ve been ‘finishing’ Owl Bat Bat Owl for months. All the main interior art was ‘done’ before we headed to the USA for Thanksgiving, but that still left the title page, endpapers and cover, so I set to REALLY finishing it when I came back.

Then came the tweaks and corrections. Bits and pieces which my editors had spotted – these post-its adorned the print-out of the art they sent me. I peeled them off as I fixed them…

But there was even more fickity feckity stuff I spotted myself. And stuff Michael pointed out – it often takes a fresh eye to notice things this late in the game. So many things to sort that I had to list them image by image, then go through methodically and tick them off as done.

Tweaks and fixes image by image

Tweaks to the tweaks…

This is my first time illustrating a book digitally and I found it involves way more tweaking than usual. With physical art there is a point at which tweaking could destroy the piece so you have to just let it be – with digital you can go on messing indefinitely.

So there were tweaks to the tweaks… some from the editors and some more of my own. I felt as if my head and shoulders were actually inside the computer and my depth of focus was permanently reduced to two feet. I was vacillating between ‘I hate this book, I don’t care what it looks like’ and ‘steady…steady…not long now…one more push and it will all be over…’

There have been books where ‘I don’t care’ won the day so I’ve got to live with those flaws I was too tired to fix. This time ‘steady, steady’ won – I even pulled the cover back from my art editor for more tweaks (one for Michael, two for me) after she’d already given it the thumbs up. But the thing is there will always be flaws, stuff which could have been better. You could go on fixing and polishing indefinitely – how do you know when to STOP?

Usually it’s the publishing schedule that dictates when you have to let go at last but the problem with all that final polishing is you risk your art losing vital energy, spontaneity, freshness, so at some point IT HAS TO END. It’s the same with a novel. In theory you can keep reworking; in reality (in my opinion) books can die from overworking. You’ve got to abandon* this book and take what you’ve learnt onto the next one. When I finally put the memory stick of files in the post I was at the stage where I could no longer see the images as images, the characters as characters – they had become just so many pixels. I was way beyond doing positive work on it so it was time to let it go.

The End.

And then, having already downed my celebratory whiskey, an image bounced back with some comments I couldn’t ignore because I agreed with them… grrr! Three days later…

THE END.

Until, that is, the proofs arrive…

*A poem is never finished, only abandoned. Paul Valery