costume

by Kimberly A. Cook          (Twitter@ WarriorTales)

Wandering around my favorite antique mall last Friday I came upon this gem of an outfit. It got me to thinking about Halloween costumes. Then I thought about what costume do I wear as a writer? We all have our private and public fashion style, but our writer costume, what would that look like?

There are my comfy writing clothes which will never be seen outside my home and then the official author outfits to wear for book signings and speeches. Every outfit is armor for a writer, depending on our current mood, audience, what’s clean and quirkiness.

While we clothe our fiction characters for their roles and a book’s cover is a very important marketing costume, like the runways in Paris our writer costume changes over time. It’s true, you only get one chance to make a first impression, either in person or with the cover of your book.

It’s also a given you need to know what you are writing and the mood or costume you want your series of books or the genre to reflect as a writer. One of my favorite exercises is to take the covers of my favorite author’s books and figure out where my book covers would fit. Spreading them out on the floor really shows a theme or “costume” for their books/brand.

This exercise is also a time and money saver, since it is much cheaper than hiring one of those New York book cover design artists. It gives me an idea of how I want my covers to look and I can then take high-caliber examples to the local graphic designer to design my covers. Both cover do’s and don’ts help the designer know what “look” you are trying to create.

We figure out our own character costume each morning by getting dressed to go out into the world in our “worker,” “Mom,” “author” or “pirate” uniforms, so remember to wear your writer costume too. Mere mortals may not be able to see our writer uniform, but we wear it all the time. What is your favorite writer outfit?