I have too many picture book ideas (I partly blame Tara Lazar & her PiBoIdMo 2011 month 🙂 and have been working on half a dozen picture book story texts over the past year: rewriting a zillion times & dumping ideas that just don’t work. Anyone who thinks picture book stories are easy to write is NUTS. Or rather…it’s easy to write a picture book. It’s very difficult to write a GOOD picture book. It makes me appreciate Michael Ian Black’s wonderful I’M BOREDstory all that much more.
Anyway, I’ve stayed sane by plowing ahead and doing drawings for picture books that don’t exist yet. Less pressure, helps me improve my craft, and who knows? I may turn some of these into full-blown projects someday. I’ve also been reading Ann Whitford Paul’s Writing Picture Books, Harold Underdown’s Complete Idiot’s Guide To Publishing Children’s Books, and Cheryl B. Klein’s Second Sight: An Editor’s Talks On Writing, Revising & Publishing Books For Children And Young Adults for inspiration.
Anyway, I decided to do the drawing at the top of this post because I liked the pig character in one of my recent Daily Drawings (see http://DebbieOhi.com for more of my Daily Drawings):
I’m participating in KidLitArt.com’s Picture Book Dummy challenge for inspiration as I continue to work on my own picture book stories AND continuing to read as many good picture books as I can. Any recommendations for well-written picture books?