Until last Friday, i had no plans to create another book. The idea was brought up at an IEP meeting for my son, one of the teachers brought it up. I told her it was a great idea, but I simply didn’t have the time. So many hours of effort go into writing the storyline, then illustrating the pages.
But then a seed was planted in me. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. My mind wrestled with how i was going to start the story.
I woke up Saturday morning with the idea still stuck in my head. We went for a walk and I noodled over it some more. It took another day for my mind to process, and by Sunday morning i was typing out the storyline. It all just came together.
I sent the draft to my book editor for review. Then I started planning out how I was going to illustrate each page.
My goal is to give this book as a goodbye present to the teachers as we leave our elementary school. So i figure I only have four weeks to make that happen. Thats not really enough time. But I will do my best to get it done.
I will have a different approach to make the creation process easier. I won’t do as many full page illustrations as my other book. Hopefully it’ll help the creation process go faster. I also won’t draw as many people or have many characters. In my last book there was a whole cast of people – teachers, friends and family. This new book will be more simplified.
I did apply for the book to be submitted to the Library of Congress. I don’t know why, but you make your submission BEFORE the book is published. I remember how disappointed I was when they didn’t accept the submission for my first book. I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen again.
Stay tuned! My goal is to create a couple pages a day, and have the full draft ready in a couple weeks. Yes an ambitious goal. But I think its doable, as long as I keep things simple and focused.
