Verdict is in

Writing pals agree The Peculiar Princess should be expanded into a chapter book, so back to the drawing board I go. Now the only question is, will my diary format work for this project? Let's just say the others were not down with it in the draft they read.

Now, if Billy would stop shoving play-doh at me, maybe I could actually try and start those revisions.

k

Getting ready for crit group

Last couple of days I've been editing my groups' work for our crit meeting this Thursday. Looking forward to it. I submitted The Peculiar Princess, and after their feedback, I think I'm going to make it my main focus, and hope to get it in an almost-final draft form by the end of August, with the hopes of submitting it in the early fall.

That is, of course, IF I can find time between my art commissions, 'day job', watching my preschooler and getting 300 pairs of earrings made for a local show at the end of August... hmmm... well, the attempt is all, anyway! LOL.

k

Impossible Picture Book Part 2

Just a quickie update. I'm trying to quickly write out the ending to The Peculiar Princess today, so I can have it ready by tomorrow to turn in to my writing group. But as I'm plugging away over here, I'm getting this nagging suspicion that this story is definitely going to be too long for a standard picture book. And...rather than cut it, maybe I should expand it to a chapter book type thing.

We'll say what my wise group has to say next week on the matter.


-k.

Impossible Picture Books

So, today I actually have positive things to report! Since Thursday night's coffee shop session where I tackled an extremely short picture book, today I managed to work on The Peculiar Princess, and I managed to rough out about 1,000 words of the story -- which is about 3/4 of the book. I have only the ending to write out and the first draft will be complete!

Yay! Go me! LOL.

But now for the bad news, because it wouldn't be a Karyn blog without bad news.

You picture book writers already have a pretty good guess about what the bad news will be. Did you happen to catch my word count in the paragraph above? (Go ahead, check it again.)

See it now? Yup, there it is. One THOUSAND WORDS AND NOT FINISHED.

I've written another unpublishable picture book.

See, in today's market, picture book agents and editors will rarely look at anything over 1,000 words from a newbie like myself. In fact, they actually want to see books that are 500 words or less! So you see my problem?

But my natural inclination, my personal preference -- and this goes back to when I was a young un' reading picture books for the first time -- is for longer stories and fairy tales with gorgeous pictures. Apaprently that's what my subconscious wants to write too.

What's a girl to do? You're supposed to write the book that you'd like to read, but if no one wants to publish it, then what?

A question for another day, I guess. Right now I'll just worry about finishing the darn thing, revise the hell out of it and see what happens.  Hopefully my critique group will have some words of wisdom for me next week, because I'll be turning this sucker over to them on Friday.

-k.

Thursday Coffee Shop Writing

So far, I've managed to keep my new, Thursday night Starbuck's writing tradition going. Managed two hours away from the screaming preschooler, just me and my laptop and a caramel frappacino, and lo and behold, I was able to edit my very rough first draft of The Goodnight Kiss into a slightly less rough second draft.

Wordwise, it's super short. Well, for me, anyway. Including the title and my name, it's coming in at 260 words. In today's picture book market, agents and editors are looking for books that have fewer than 500 words. The problem for me, is, finding that balance between sparse text, and illustrations. In my head, I can see this illustrated out, and it works, but how do editors judge text, language, that's so stripped down? Do they judge your 'hook' or story concept?

The novelist in me wants to write short stories that are 1500 words long, full of description of every action, setting, etc. What helped me last night was to write this one not as prose, but to break it up, as I would a poem. Back in the day (five, six, seven years ago)  I used to do poetry slams, and some of that started to come back to me last night. That rhythm. Maybe if I keep writing in that mindset when I'm writing these picture books, I'll be able to master shorter word counts.

So, success! Accomplishment! And now I have to stop my preschooler from using my bad back as a jungle gym.

-k.