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Part of the fun of writing a children’s book is the unlimited palate of fanciful characters and situations available.  I have said it before, but I would purposefully compose scenes that I thought would be murder to illustrate.  Ruler Of Space really let me “go crazy”, so we found our main character zooming through space on Nintendo-esque X-rays and having their hair cut by cats wearing rocket packs.

Compared to those, playing hockey on Neptune was pretty tame!  Perhaps I forgot to mention the oposing team… take a look.

Ugh! Look at that blank page.  Curser blinking mockingly, “I’m ready… ready… ready… what’s the hold up?”  You are physically unable to write. Frozen. You’ve got writers block!

Fortunately for you this problem is not even real.  That’s right, it’s not real.  You are still thinking in words (probably something along the lines of, “It was a dark and storm night… nah, it’s been done… It was a sunny and temperate brunch… ugh”) and this is good news because it means that you can still write.

You still know how to press keys down and in which order to correctly spell out all the words you’re thinking (well maybe not “conscientiously” but that’s what spell-check is for).  So there you have it, you are not faced with an INABILITY to write, you are suffering from an attack of confidence.

Don’t be such a baby.

No one is going to read what you write right now.  You’ll make sure to that.  But you ARE going to write SOMETHING and it’ll go something like this:  “I don’t know what to write.  None of my ideas are any good.  I wanted to write about the struggles of maintaining morality in the hard, wild West, but the only character I can think of looks and sounds exactly like John Wayne.  I’m not a writer, writers come up with original characters.  My whole book will populate all of Wyoming with 6 foot tall carbon copies of John Wayne, each one being more brave and upstanding than the next.

Hey, there you go.  John Wayne shows down with John Wayne to see who’s more brave and righteous…”

Okay, what I just wrote is TERRIBLE.  But you know what?  I want to write now.   I want to write about a land populated exclusively of damsels and heroes with no one to play the bad guy or bartender.  Moral: there is no good without evil.  It could be fun.

Just start and let the rest take care of itself. My friend Sylvia Plath put it this way: “Everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

My pal Scott Adams (the guy who does those “Dilbert” comics) put it this way: “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”

And my neighbor’s uncle Ray Bradbury (the sci-fi guy) wrote me a telegram to give to you, it reads: “Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.”

They all basically say the same thing.  What’s stopping you is your doubt about the quality or value of your ideas.  Don’t kill them before they get on paper.  KILL THEM AFTER!  Have NO MERCY on them!  But give them a shot at least.  They may lead you somewhere unexpected.

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Above is a sample picture from my wife’s keepsake children’s book collection.  They are from a series called “Alice in Bibleland” which aims to educate young children about God and good behavior.  We’ll come back to them in a moment. 

Some children’s books, The Berenstien Bears being the biggest culprit in my mind, aim to teach a moral or lesson through their stories.   Little Timmy learns to tell the truth, Silly Sarah remembers to brush her teeth and so on. 

Too often, these stories are corny or, worse yet, “preachy” and kids can see right through them.  Given free choice, how many kids say, “Read me ‘Tommy Turtle Learns to Respect His Parents’!”   Not many.  What is it that so often makes these stories fall flat?  I believe that it is because these stories are not “true”. 

Even in fiction, we want our stories to have a ring of truth to them even as we acknowledge that they may have never happened at all.  We want stories that we believe could happen, or, given a universe where bears and rabbits talk and play poker, would likely happen in a similar fashion.  

This is called the suspension of disbelief, but it doesn’t mean believing anything and everything in a story.  It means allowing for the possibility and “playing along”.  Let’s pretend I’m reading a story (suspend your disbelief for a moment) whose setting is in a world exactly like ours except that bears and rabbits talk and play poker.  Now let’s say that the bears discover that the rabbits have been cheating and say, “Gee Whiz, Rabbits.  Your cheating has cost us our entire month’s salary of honey.  We would kindly like it back.”   “No way, Jose,” say the Rabbits, to which the Bears reply, “Oh well, forgive and forget.  Another hand?”

This story is unbelievable.  Not because the bears and rabbits are talking and wagering large sums of honey, but because we don’t believe that, GIVEN all those facts, the bears would react in that manner.  The same goes with a lame story about Little Johnny stealing from the cookie jar.  He does so because he wants a cookie, and feels good when he succeeds in getting it.  But when his mother tells him, “You shouldn’t steal from the cookie jar, it will spoil your dinner,” he wouldn’t believable say, “You are right, Mother.  What a naughty boy I’ve been.  I will listen to you from now on.”

We might believe if, however, Little Johnny continues to eat all the cookies, gets an upset stomach and misses out on his favorite meal, Pizza Night!  Nothing sets of alarm bells in our brains more than a character who is forced to act counter to her nature by an author with an agenda.

Now, back to Alice in Bibleland.  The book that particularly appealed to me was called “Psalms and Proverbs”.  As moral instructions, Proverbs are very good because they represent wisdom and truisms passed down for hundreds of generations.  The same goes for Aesops Fables (a good site full of these fables can be found here).  Everyone knows someone like the greedy fox, or the shortsighted grasshopper and the lessons they teach from their follies ring true because we’ve observed people or situations like them for ourselves.

Whether or not you are aiming to teach your child about God, the above pages are universal.  “A soft answer turneth away wrath,”  and “Pleasant words are as a honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones.”  They are moralistic and illustrated in AGONIZING sweetness, but they don’t read as “false”, like some other books that strongarm their stories to fit the moral or lesson.

I hope I’ve helped you put your finger on why some of those books you’ve come across (you know the ones) are so dang CORNY.

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Writing good children’s books is about seeing the world through the eyes of a child.  So when my wife, who is a rising star in the field of Dietetics, was put up for 4 nights at the Amalfi Hotel  in downtown Chicago for an intense weekend of committee meetings, I decided to tag along and PLAY.

My goal is simple, rather than having my staycation resemble this movie:

I decided it should be more like this Disney TV show:

As my wife tries to slogs her way through daylong meetings, I’ve gone on a knee-high photo safari throughout the hotel to ”see through the eyes of a child”.  Let’s see what we discover!

These Beds are Huge-mongous!

The Elevator is Faaaaaar Away

Almoooost...

What's THAT do?

The floor is Hot Lava, how can I make it across?...

Can't Reeeeaaaach!!!

Things are just more artistic down here.

I think I’ve gained some pretty good insights.  I’ll let you know how crazy I get after regressing to childhood over five days of being marooned in my hotel!

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In my previous post How To Write a Children’s Book,  I listed editing as the last (but not least) step.  I’ve recently been reminded of the genius that blooms when we prune our overgrown phrases to let the content breathe.  It came from an unlikely place, the Garfield comic strip.

Actually, it was Garfield minus Garfield by Dan Walsh.  He found a way to make the chronically unfunny Garfield strip hilarious and poignant… remove Garfield.

By removing the distraction of Garfield, Mr. Walsh is able to “reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle.”  It’s an obvious move in hindsight, one that makes you wonder how good Fred Basset might be… no, it’d still be terrible.

I thought I’d share an example of how I think editing gives me a chance to reassess my first drafts and communicate my intentions more clearly.

I thought I’d share Here is an example of how I think editing gives me a chance helps me to reassess my first drafts and communicate my intentions write more clearly.

Editing helps me write more clearly.

Editing = Clarity

E = C

OK, so you can go too far, but it’s a fun exercise to try, especially in Children’s writing when every word counts though you may be surprised how much improvement you’ll find when you apply it elsewhere.

OK, so you can go too far, but it’s a fun exercise to TRY , especially in Children’s writing when every word counts though you may be surprised how much improvement you’ll find when you apply IT! elsewhere.

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