The Covid-19 quarantine is upon us. Here in the USA, the lockdown is in its fifth month. Many people–not sick but forced to stay home–are looking for new ways to explore and express their creativity. Some just need a way to release their feelings. Writers, particularly, have enough free time to write, some for the first time in their lives. While I have great sympathy for people affected by the illness, I have been able to use the down time creatively.

I am writing A WAKE OF STARLIGHT, the fourth novel in my Starlight-on-the-Gulf Series of romance/suspense/mystery novels. (I have added a touch of spirituality, too.) I am excited about Volume 4. It continues the saga of the scandalous life of movie-star Heston Demming. The first three Heston novels, primarily set in Naples, Florida, are A CHANCE TO SAY YES, A WILD DREAM OF LOVE, and A BIG FAN OF YOURS. When you decide to read the series, please start at the beginning.

Each book cover is unique. The image featured here will not be the book cover for A WAKE OF STARLIGHT. Instead, it is merely a first imaging of the cover. It allows me to see into the future and fantasize what the final cover will be like. It is a starting point for my imagination.

Plus, it gives me the feeling that the book already exists. I once heard Dr. Wayne Dyer talk about using a similar technique. He said that each time he started a new book he would create a 3-D facsimile of it. Then he would place the “mock-up” nearby, so that he could see it—envision it—as he wrote. He believed in the existence of the completed book, and so, he completed the writing of it.

That activity was part of his creative process, and now, modified for the digital age, it is part of mine. Are you a writer who is writing  through the pandemic? Perhaps you might use this technique, too.

To create, you must conceive. To achieve, you must believe.

Until our next excursion into the creative process, I am

Tina Murray, Ph. D.

Editor and Writer