…are about nil. It doesn’t change how people often expect me to read their minds anyway. I don’t know what that’s about—though if I could read minds, I’m sure I would know.

In my line of work, I’m forced to try to develop some mind reading skills, and when I’m on my game, I need only a word, an image, a look, or a gesture, and I know exactly what people want from me. I am, however, very rarely on my game. So I spend a lot of time guessing things. I’m good at it, granted, but it’s still just guessing.

I had a creative director once who was somewhat articulate, except for the fact that words liked to perch on the tip of his tongue, unreachable. With him being the easily frustrated sort and with me being a generally impatient listener, we developed a sort of tweedle dee and tweedle dum back and forth patter in our conversations, where he would start a sentence in response to mine and then trail a bit as he searched for the second half or last word. With hardly a beat, I’d jump in and finish his sentence for him, which allowed him to continue his thought and move on.

I was lucky in that instance. I made really good guesses at what he wanted to say, and sometimes I’d even provide a better turn of phrase than he might have used.

At the same job, our boss could easily visualize the catalog we were designing, and he would lay the product photos out in his head along with the imaginary copy in 10 pt. text, making it very, very easy for me to read his mind and accomplish exactly what he wanted. When he left—unfortunately, to be replaced later by one who liked to say, “I don’t know what I want to put there yet, but I’ll know it when I see it.”—my skills as a mind reader hit rock bottom, and my page design was never, ever what he wanted.

But believe me, it’s much, much easier to read a mind if that mind actually has anything in it to read. Every time I tried to read that person’s mind, all I drew was a mess or a blank. Dude. Totally not my fault. I work with what you give me.

And now, as a cover artist, I sometimes find that I must redevelop my mind reading skills. Again, there are times when I’m good. Really good. I’ll hand over a cover draft, and I’ll get squeals in my inbox, words screaming, “Oh, my God! You’ve read my mind. That’s perfect! It’s exactly what I wanted. Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

And then there are times when I’ll turn in a cover draft, and I’ll get “corrections” like, oh—this person was supposed to be black and that person should look more like a pedophile. Yeah, true story, but never mind that. When I get corrections that significant, I find myself looking through the art brief, wondering how I could have missed such important details. I mean, it’s right there between the lines, totally not visible to the naked eye, but come on, it’s completely obvious to any artist who can read the mind of any author. Didn’t I get that?

That’s when I start to feel like a failure at this mind reading stuff that people keep expecting me to do. It’s my fault that my art doesn’t match my client’s vision. I totally wasn’t able to read his or her mind. So, yeah. My bad. They’re absolved, and I really need to enroll in a mind reading class.

At least … that’s what they’re thinking, right?

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