Creativity Born in Silence

I got a piece of snail mail today that just dropped me into one of those muses about how what you create can be shaped so much by fate. What I received was a rejection letter from Arthur A Levine for a submission I did about 10 months ago. They told me that they had lost the manuscript between readings (thus the letter arriving after 10 months instead of 2 months). It was the footnote on a bit of irony because not receiving anything at all at the time was a huge source a frustration and laid down the challenge gauntlet for me: to not spend half my life trying to query, not do a cheesy self publish job on the book, but to do a real publication job on the book, better than the big six. After all, I live in Silicon Valley, the land where anything is possible :) So I did one of those head first dives in intense learning and was determine to learn to be a publisher. This meant finding a professional editor and taking a near vertical climb on my writing quality and the depth of the story. I had to survey innovations in book design and discovered that a book doesn't have to be just a pile of text but an encompassing visual/mental experience, which means extensive artwork and innovative book layouts. The creativity of the author doesn't have to be confined to just the written word, but can extend to every corner of the book---how it looks, how it feels. The technology is there and there are people with the skills to implement this creation. Many of them are sitting around barely using their skills, wishing for the opportunity to contribute their creativity. You just have to find them (it is like a needle in a haystack) and be their trigger. You have to dare to innovate where the big six don't seem to want to go, like book press files with full color art throughout the entire the book---designed in color from top to bottom. The total piece of art work being born. And all of this occurred because of dead silence. Sometimes great art can be born in silence. At least that is my hope.