My assistant, Shiloh would love to be a children's book writer.
She asks me questions from time to time and today we thought it might
be a good idea to write down her questions and my responses. I will warn you that nothing
I say is particularly earth shattering or new. I assume my answers are obvious, but then again,
I have been writing and illustrating picture books since 1981. What might be obvious to me,
might come as inspiration for someone else. At least, that's what we are hoping.
So, today, Shiloh asked, "How do you know where to start?"
My response is; We don't always know. Sometimes we 'think' we have a great idea.
My suggestion is, dive in. Just start writing. EVEN if all you write is, "This is scary.
I have no idea what I am about to write. I don't even have any ideas....."
That is a great start. Keep going. You might find that you wanted to write about, let's say, a talking flower or something like that, but because you were just going on and on about not knowing what to write, a character starts to emerge from what you have already written. That character is searching. Longing to find their story... And your talking flower might not be the story at all. Your story just might be about someone searching.... Or, something completely different. If you don't start writing, chances are, that story won't write itself. (If it does, that's a hell of a story as well!)
So, Shiloh, my advice today is to START WRITING!
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