After two years' work, first-time novelist has chosen author photo

It's been quite a journey.

After two years of hard work on my first novel, tentatively titled The Golden Journeys of the Day, or: Cressida Miller Wonders Where The World Has Gone, I want to announce to everyone that I have successfully — sorry, I'm getting choked up already, this has been quite a process — I have successfully taken the perfect author photo and will soon begin actually writing the book.

Every writer has their own process, from Shakespeare to Virginia Woolf to myself, but my routine has typically been to rise around 7 a.m. Watching the sunrise through the window is extremely motivating and inspiring, to be sure, but far more important is the way that morning light catches the side of my face. Basically cuts down my time later spent in Photoshop by 50%.

I don't care how good the lighting set-up is in your house — natural light is often the only way to get that golden glow that says, "Thanks for reading my book. And before you ask, yes, it was just an iPhone."

The "starving artist" myth has a lot of people living in basements while they crank out their early work, but I can't think of anything less conducive to a good snap than such a dreary hovel.

I'd love to be telling you different, but you absolutely should purchase a beautiful, airy house, a vast airplane hangar, or a stunning farmer's field in France before you even begin writing your first book.

Put in the prep work.

Though I am proud of my novel, a.k.a. the picture I have taken, I want to say that I absolutely realize I could not have done this by myself.

Even though I did go with a selfie in the end, my mother (in whose beautiful, airy house I'm staying) held the phone for hours and hours while I posed, and constantly rejecting her efforts was what ultimately helped me to shape the final aesthetic I wanted.

It's kind of ironic that I'm the one who wrote a novel and yet she is the one who got carpal tunnel syndrome!

And I should know irony — I'm a writer.

I do not believe I am a procrastinator. I merely believe that you do one thing at a time, and you do it well.

That is why I will now set my focus to writing the novel, tentatively due out in August of 2046. I will do this immediately after I choose the dedication. Can you dedicate a book to a photo?

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