Writing

Where Do Picture Book Ideas Come From?

/ still a dreamer / 2 Comments

The recent PiBoIdMo challenge, which I am continuing into December and onward, showed me a couple things about where picture book ideas come from, so I thought I’d share.

  1. They come from our everyday experiences. Yesterday I posted a couple pictures of the sky at dusk. As it happens, 2 of my PB ideas had to do with the sky. They are both totally different, but where did they come from? My direct experience with what I viewed outside … a cloudy day and a brilliant sunset. I got to wondering … how did they get that way? And the answers started popping. Whatever we’re involved in at any given moment may give us ideas. Look out the window; go for a walk; watch a few kids playing at the park; discreetly listen – there’s some ideas right there!
  2. Ideas come from what we know. The advice we get from editors and agents is to write what we know … I’m always involved with animals in one way or another, and it is something I do write about. Many of my story ideas. although all different from one another, are about animals … inspired by my own cats, or dogs, birds in the snow, a parrot I know, etc.
  3. Ideas come from what inspires us. A true story that happened a few years ago about a heroic rescue of a huge animal …  a story of men who risked their lives to save one animal, and who in her own way returned to thank them. I’m not sure how I can parlay that into an exciting PB yet, but I’m not letting go. The entire event was inspirational, and I do believe children would be moved and inspired as well.
  4. Ideas come from something important we have to impart to a child. Hopefully, by the time we’re writing children’s books, we’ve learned a thing or two in life, and maybe, just maybe, we have some gem of wisdom to bring to children. Not in a preachy or obvious or pedantic way, but in a way where they’ll love a story with a subtle message that speaks to them … the value of friendship, being kind to others, whatever it may be. Quite a few of my story ideas have – surprise! – no animals in them, just children, and something I’d like them to know. And so …
  5. Ideas also come from past experience – different from what we know. How we overcame being bullied at 5 on the monkeybars, might be fodder for an idea. (That wasn’t me – I wasn’t allowed to climb up beyond that second bar.) We all grew up and had all kinds of experiences – what we learned from them, or didn’t, can feed a PB or two.
  6. Ideas come from that most special kind of childhood thought .. magical thinking. I fall into magical thinking alarmingly easily, and it’s not just fun it’s .. well … magic! The unexplainable, the mystifying, don’t we all love it? It’s the unexpected twist of fate, the reveal of a character’s true identity, that makes us sit up and be curious about how things may REALLY work. What small child doesn’t have some brilliant, albeit “unrealistic”, (in our very serious adult world), ideas about how things go. We can learn a thing or two about small children’s thought processes.
  7. Ideas come from reading. Not that we are ever taking anyone else’s ideas, but that by constantly reading books of all kinds – fiction, non-fiction, for children, for adults – we are literally soaking up creativity. Without always noticing, we are sorting out what things work, what don’t, how we feel when certain things happen. Or when they don’t. I am always reading and have been since the day I could. Reading is not just a joy, but today, it’s grist for the writer’s mill.
  8. Images – ideas come from images – photographs, paintings, illustrations – ever look at a picture book’s illustrations, compare it to the story they accompany, and think “that’s not what happened!” Leaf through a magazine – what are people talking about? Whose child is that really?
  9. Did I mention food? Ha! Now there’s an inspiration that needs no explanation.

Any sources of inspiration I missed?

Traveling in Time

/ still a dreamer

I’m really enjoying this book … it’s one that I feel drawn to when I’ve finished whatever else needed to be done during the day and when I have some time and space to relax with a book.

Written in 1970, Time and Again does not have the fast-paced style of some of our current novels; Finney is no Dan Brown, but … he has a great story — within a story, as it turns out — and he has my attention. I am about mid-way through and my interest is only picking up.  Our main character Simon Morley has committed to a top-secret government mission to see if people can travel back to points in time, to particular locations, and return with information. A good portion of the beginning of this book details Morley’s being approached, his being interviewed, and then prepared to step back in time.

He returns to February 1882 in New York City to observe a particular transaction between 2 men which seems to have precipitated the financial ruin and suicide of one of them. One of the project’s directives when Morley enters an earlier time is that he not take any action which might change future events. The question we see, when he is in his third visit is, is this possible? And this is what will be revealed as I read on.

Another attraction in this story is that it takes place in NYC. Being familiar with the Dakota and the 72nd St. entrance to Central Park, knowing its proximity to the much-loved Museum of Natural History, having been in Trinity Church more than once, and having worked in the tangled web of narrow streets that is the Wall Street area is, in itself, a big draw for me. But reading his in-depth descriptions of what this all was like in 1882 … is riveting. As an artist, Morley sketched the areas of the city that he saw and some of the people he met … and these all appear in the book.

I think what may be the clincher in this story is that while reading it, and it’s written in the first person, it is absolutely believable that Kinney/Morley is writing not fiction, but a first hand experience of his involvement with the project and actual regressions into 1882.

So while the book’s writing style may be a bit dated, it’s a real attention grabber nonetheless. And I always like a book I can’t wait to pick up again.

12/11/10 – FINISHED! I finished reading this last night, and it lived up to – and even beyond – my expectations. Although a bit long when Morley is on the run from the police, it soon changes into several unexpected scenarios, primarily a great final twist. Like time travel? A good mystery? A good read!

PiBoIdMo Cont’d.

/ still a dreamer

And the good news keeps coming! Because I work on the computer for a living and am on it all week, I sometimes do not want to even turn it on on the weekend. Sometimes I m more successful than at other times, but this Saturday I had successfully eluded it’s demands until … I was being tapped on the shoulder. By whom? I’ll say my own intuition, because while I sat down to dinner, I had this urge that something important was waiting for me in my e-mail. I dismissed it, but the feeling was pretty strong.

So after dinner, I booted up, checked my e-mail, and there it was — a message from Tara Lazar announcing that I was 1 of the 3 Grand Prize Winners in the PiBoIdMo Challenge!! Woo Hoo! Now I didn’t win because I did anything other than complete my 30+ ideas during November – the drawing was random. But what I’m excited about is the prize – I got to send 5 of my ideas off to the literary agent that Tara paired me off with and who will critique me on my picture book ideas.

I honestly found the commitment to coming up with new PB ideas daily it’s own reward, but to have the opportunity to get a critique on some of them by a professional … well, now that’s some mighty pretty frosting on the cake. I can’t wait to hear back!

 

PiBoIdMo – A Month of Ideas

/ still a dreamer

What a great month it was in terms of writing picture book ideas … as hosted on Tara Lazar’s site, PiBoIdMo – Picture Book Idea Month –  was certainly an inspiration. Whether I win one of the 3 idea critiques by agents offered as random prizes or not – and wouldn ‘t that be nice? – PiBoIdMo kept the ideas flowing, and what’s more they are continuing to flow even now through December.

I have a book upstairs, written a while ago, entitled A Kick in the Seat of the Pants. The title pretty much says it all and it’s about getting off our respective duffs and doing what we aspire to do. Well, PiBoIdMo did just that .. and I now have 30+ ideas from which to build new picture books. (And I got that nifty completion winner button, too!)

Are you stalled in your writing? Though November is the official month, one could really do this at any time … it could be for picture books, novels and even illustrations. Or sketches. The idea is getting us moving and in that, it succeeded! Inspiration is definitely a good thing!

The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett

/ still a dreamer / 2 Comments

The Secret Garden is a children’s book classic. It’s a novel written in 1911, pretty much at a YA reading level, based on vocabulary and complexity, but with a fairly simple plot, (told in extensive detail), of 10 year old children. I believe that The Secret Garden must be looked at as a piece typical of its time, and for many reasons I doubt it would be published today.

The main characters’ age would be looking for a middle grade or younger audience; the reading level required would be older still. A contradiction. In addition, the author is often highly critical of her own characters, and in describing them, does not engender empathy for them, but rather a dislike. It’s what the reader brings to the characters, I think, that makes them likable. And the detail … there’s an awful lot of it. I suspect The Secret Garden could be told in a fraction of it’s length. But such was not the writing of the time, and this story is nearly a 100 years old.

So what was the attraction in reading this for me?  First, I wanted to remember what it was about, as it was so long ago that I’d loved it. I still love the plot – the healing of two children, Mary and Colin, who suffered greatly through lack of love, and yet being utterly spoiled in their different circumstances. Their healing comes through the wonders of nature and a third child, Dickon, who is inextricably a part of the natural world. His relationship with animals and his understanding of all green, growing things is magical. I also enjoyed the location, the Yorkshire moors, and how Burnett shares the lives and language of the characters who reside there.

And I do so like Burnett’s message – that the magic that ultimately heals is not just the magnificent natural world around us, but the belief in the power of positive thought. Reading the story tells us so, but Burnett’s gem is briefly made clear in one small section of the story, where she reveals this to be the key to both Mary’s and Colin’s recovery from their physical and emotional ailments. “Much more surprising things can happen to anyone who, when a disagreeable or discouraged thought comes into his mind, just has the sense to remember in time and push it out by putting in an agreeable determinedly courageous one. Two things cannot be in the same place at the same time.”

The message of The Secret Garden, written a century ago, is as current and powerful as that of many books written today. It’s a bit of a long read, but a trek into an interesting life and time, and with an uplifting message and satisfying conclusion. However, I don’t know who its audience today might be.