Hey, a Children’s Book Seems Like a Good Idea, Right?
I never intended to become a children’s author. It just, sort of, happened. The first draft of Wherever You Roam, my debut children’s picture book, began as a poem for my oldest son on a long layover at Heathrow airport. Since his birth, it had been progressively harder for me to be away from home. I missed him. So, admittedly, I may have been a bit, well…sensitive at that time. I mean to say, I am always a tad sentimental but when I found myself tearing up during an episode of the Bubble Guppies, I finally accepted the need for a creative outlet. That’s when I thought, “Hey, why not write a children’s picture book?”
Somewhere Near the Intersection of Creative Inspiration and Embarrassment
Little did I know that reliving a piece of my childhood would be a difficult experience. And to the extent that I found myself facing anxieties that I’d not felt in a very long time. Primarily, the fear of judgment and criticism. I easily tabled that fear at first, justifying that I was only writing the story for Jack’s bedtime. But, as it became progressively evident that whatever was coming out on paper may someday be read by a broader audience than his small bedroom could readily accommodate, it became harder to dispell my anxieties. Although I’ve always had a fear of being judged critically, it’s never been strong enough to keep me from marching to the beat of my own drum. It has, however, been strong enough to keep me marching in private most of the time. If I was going to do this, then I’d need to do it properly.
Long Picture Books – Standards, Conventions and… Well, Mine
So, after spilling my heart out on paper, I adjusted myself in the uncomfortable chair and mulled over the mess from a discerning distance. It had, somehow, dripped from my mouth in light verse with an internal rhyming scheme. Ooooops… I hadn’t really noticed many of my son’s children’s books taking that approach.
From beneath a furrowed eyebrow, I then starred down several complex concepts, such as river water returning again as rain someday. Hum… that’s probably too old for my three-year-old, right? And a rhetorical question from an imaginary tree? I needed to pull out a child psychology book to determine when children can grasp such things. Then I counted the words. I almost let out a small shriek as the word count came in at 1,056. I hadn’t done my homework on best practices yet, but something told me that this book didn’t look like, walk like, or quack like the other books I’d been buying and reading to my son.
So, some research began to connect the dots in my head. Children are reading earlier and earlier these days. Which means they move on to chapter books at a progressively early age. Therefore, my book may fall into no-mans-land, somewhere between the minuscule attention span of toddlers and the ever-expanding capabilities of school-aged kids – right smack-dab in the middle of a vanishing preschool stage.
And that’s not to mention the ever-diminishing attention span of parents – after all, we’re busy and tired, so often we’re in such a rush to get the kiddos to sleep that our oration begins to sound like an auctioneer at the county fair.
What Did I Get Myself Into? And Should I Get Out While I Still Can?
I had a problem. Did I want to abandon the project and pursue something more akin to the best-sellers? After all, the guidelines are set by traditional publishers. And publishers are brilliant people with their exacting fingers on the ever-changing pulse of the market. A market where in general, I saw less complex sentences and word counts under 600. So, do I forge bravely forward into the throes of potential (more so, likely) rejection and criticism? Or, do I hang it up and try again with all this new-found insight into the secret formula to success?
I decided to move forward, making my best effort to improve in the direction of the conventions without compromising the story. I hired an editor to help polish the language and an exceptional illustrator to bring the story to life. Then, I trimmed the word count down to under 900 (oh, how it pained me), and, yes, removed the rhetorical question. Now, it’s nearing time to put it out into the world, in the hopes that you will enjoy reading this story to your children when it’s released by Natchoo Press on September 18th, 2018.
As they say, here goes nothin’.
