Maybe a Cover
I’ve got to finish up this Great Gatsby project I’ve been working on. I started it back in January of 2022 and as I write this it’s April of 2025. So I’ve started my fourth year of working on it. Of course I haven’t touched it since December of 2024 so it’s not like I’ve been working on it constantly for three years. At the beginning I decided to give myself as much time as I needed on it. Otherwise I didn’t think I’d ever even start it. It’s my own project so it doesn’t need a deadline.
The last thing I did on it in December was to finish some cartoon art cards (http://radiantcomics.com/art-writing-paste-it-down-and-draw/) and put those into the book. Then I had to print out those new pages and add them to the first proof of the book that I had printed. That’s where it has stood these last three months.
Though the book is almost finished, I have way more illustrations in it than the average illustrated book, I still have some stuff that needs to get done. Number one is figuring out the cover. I have one cover illustration made and it’s set up to be the cover right now but the design isn’t finished. I’m not even sure I want it to be the cover. I have other ideas for the cover that I might go with. Either way I was working on the cover design yesterday. I added in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s name and my own name to the design. It’s not much but they weren’t even there before.
I also added in an illustration that I didn’t like before I fixed it up with some collage. It’s the one mentioned in the link above in paragraph two. I decided to add it to the end of the book rather than in its place among the text. It’s an illustration of the last swimmers coming out of the water. It was mentioned at the beginning of an early chapter but I think it’s more poignant at the end of the book. We readers become the last swimmers out of the water at the end of the book. I like that.
I also had to rearrange some of the end pages. Those pages are filled with small drawings of Gatsby’s party guests. I originally had one of those pages set up as cover three (the inside front cover) and an illustration on cover 4 (the back cover). I decided that I had better set up a regular back cover which will have some blurbs and to move the end paper to the last page of the book with the illustration now on cover 3. I needed an extra page for the swimmers too.
There are over a hundred drawings of Gatsby’s party guests on the end pages and they are set up on a grid. The grids are 4×3 and there are ten pages of faces so that makes 120 drawings. Except that there were only 119 names so I an actually one drawing short. The last box is blank.
I made those 119 drawings so long ago that I can’t remember if I had a plan for that last one. I’m not sure if I ever did but I have a plan now. I’m going to put myself in that box. I’ll draw a self portrait in that same style. I’ll probably have to draw myself younger since twenty something year old Jared would fit in with that crowd. Fifty eight year old Jared probably wouldn’t.
I mentioned the back cover above but that really needs some work. It has to be written and designed and I have nothing for that so far. I think the writing is going to have to be something like one of my blogs about the book but I’m not sure exactly what. I don’t think the book needs a recap of what Gatsby is but could use a recap of what got me to make my own illustrated version. But I’m not sure. I’ll actually have to write and design it before I’m sure. Whenever that will be.
One of the final things I have to do is to proof the text of the book. Gatsby came into the public domain shortly before I started this project and so I found the text of the book online and used that to typeset the book. But I never proofread it.
Typesetting the book involves a lot of formatting the text. What fonts do you want? What size should the font be? Do you want any italics or bolds? How are the chapters set up? Do you want any special flourishes? Those are some of the questions to be answered when typesetting.
Plus there are usually all sorts of weird things going on with type you find online. Formatting stuff that different writing programs put in. Extra spaces and weird apostrophes abound. All that had to be fixed.
I find that all a bit easier to do than proofreading. Typesetting is more like putting together a puzzle. There is no real picture on the box but you know the thing has to look like a book in the end. So you’re making it look like a book. Proofreading takes a lot of concentration. You have to pay attention to every word equally.
I have a plan to get the proofreading done and that’s to read along with an audiobook. Gatsby is a short book and the audiobook is only about five hours long so that’s not too bad. I can also reference a printed version of the book if I need to. I’ve had that plan for about two years now but still haven’t done it. I will someday.
I want to get this first version on my illustrated Gatsby done this year. I say the first version because I have it set up so that I can add new illustrations into it whenever I want to. I think I can make the book available digitally but a print version would be too expensive. As a digital book I can add stuff to it and update the file. That’s kind of cool. And if I don’t get it done this year there is always next year. That’s what’s good about not having a deadline. You can keep going.