Happy Friday, squiders! I hope you’re doing well. It keeps snowing on my plans over here in these parts.
I think I’ve told you guys about my plan to try out writing some picture books. I tried once before (waaaaay back in 2012, before I had small, mobile ones of my own) and it was hard, but now that I’ve read a ton in recent years, I feel like I have a better handle on the whole thing.
(hahahaha we’ll see, won’t we?)
In an attempt to have this go better than the last time, I’ve been doing some research. One of the things I’ve been looking at is how many pages you get to tell your story, since, unlike a novel, a picture book needs to fit in a set, industry-standard range, and it seemed important to understand what that was before I wrote the book and potentially ended up with too many or too few pages.
My research tells me the story tends to make up somewhere between 26 and 30 pages (with 28 being most common) with their being four pages of administrative stuff (such as title pages, dedications, copyright, etc.).
I’ve also been taking classes various places, studying illustration and narrative art and comics, all of which are very interesting. But I kind of feel like I’ve reached the point where I’m still poking around because I’m nervous about actually doing the work, if you know what I mean.
The last time I tried this (seven years ago! Good Lord!) went poorly. It is scary trying a new format. But I know what I need to know, and I just need to do the dang thing.
What else have I been up to so far this year?
- I wrote the second-to-last section of my serial. The last part will be done next month.
- I edited my anthology story. Just one more rounds of edits before publication. I’ve also spent some time making mock covers and poking titles.
- I joined the genre stretch challenge over at WriYe (this month is dystopian + Gilded Age romance) and am about 1.5K into my story.
- I also joined the prompt challenge, picked universes to work in (decided on Shards and the Trilogy), and chose prompt lists
- Siri and I are actively working on CoHaR II now that we’ve survived the holidays (and Disney World)
- One of my writing groups is doing their winter critique marathon, so I’ve got my space dinosaur story in there. So far, so good.
For the rest of the month, I’m going to work on the genre stretch story, CoHaR II, and the picture book. For February, I’m pondering a few different things.
- Now that the nonfiction books are drafted, I should go back through them, compile them, add new sections, and get them ready for publication.
- I’d also like to start a new draft of something. I’m pondering going back and doing Holly Lisle’s How to Think Sideways class with something, which I’ve never gotten all the way through. But now could be a good time to do so.
How’s your January going? Thoughts on February? Things to note about picture books?
