31 Days, 31 Stories

Happy End of June, everybody... And happy Canada Day Eve to all of my friends up north.

I have decided what I want to focus on while vacationing in Washington state. As I mentioned before, I usually take on a full-length project, like Duck Town and Camp Omigosh. But this time I am going to do a whole bunch of short projects.

So, my lofty goal is to create a picture book manuscript for every day in July.

If you asked me a couple weeks ago if this was possible I would have said NO WAY... Picture Books aren't long... They shouldn't be more than 1500 words in most cases... And usually editors want them between 500 and 1000 words. However, they can be really tricky to write. Normally, I draft a picture book over the course of a week. But even that's not quite true because it often takes a long time just to come up with a decent idea. So, this "A Picture Book A Day" idea is a little bit kooky...

But so far I feel good about it... Probably in the same way Don Quixote feels good about jousting windmills.

I have gotten a head start... In the past two days I've written back to back picture books, and I'm two-thirds of the way through #3.

I'll keep you posted as the project continues... But I realize it might not be the most exciting blog topic... I'll try to just share the highlights.

I have been taking lits of photos, and if the wifi holds up, I should be able to post some of them.

Hey, is anybody out there planning to go to the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators Los Angeles conference?