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 opposing team… take a look.

As an author, I am often asked where I get my ideas from. Some people assume that artists are born a higher quantity of a finite substance called “creativity”. It follows logically that regular folks, who were not blessed with whimsy, must safeguard their limited amount or it will run out like a depleted well.

Creativity is more like a Mogwai. When it is watered, it spawns more and more Mogwai, but never feed your Mogwai after midnight because then it will become a Gremlin.

  

Wait…  Let’s try again.  Creativity is like gardening.  You create a space and prepare it.  You make sure the soil is fertilized and that the area will get enough sun.  You decide what to you’d like to grow and plant your seeds.  You water every day and weed when needed.  You ward off pests to protect your crop.  You watch like a proud parent as your fruits and vegetables grow big, strong and beautiful.  You reap your harvest and lo, and behold, you have hundreds more seeds that you could plant over again.

You don’t need a designated space to be creative, but it helps. A space where you feel safe to explore and experiment is a protected, fertile environment to plant your ideas. Then you need to water them with attention. They can’t grow without you actively giving your time and energy.

You need to protect yourself and your ideas from others who may be negative or judgmental. They may destroy your creation before it is ever fully realized. When your creation is fully formed, it will be self sufficient and resilient, with a life of its own.

             PEST                               PEST

During the whole process, you will have discovered a hundred other opportunities to start again in another way and you will be nourished by your previous success.

It’s a corny analogy (get it, corny), but it is apt enough. Creativity takes follow-through on an idea and that same follow-through leads to more ideas. Creativity takes a risk. Some ideas may “die”, but others will blossom more successfully than you could have imagined.

You may have one idea that you’ve been saving, holding on to it because you’ve thought your creativity was finite. I suggest you plant it and create a garden teeming with life.

…

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 stormy 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.

…

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.

…

Did you know that Grimms’ Fairy Tales are public domain?  This means that anyone can use, remix, reprint, or download these texts without restriction.  You can download text , audio and even illustrations (isn’t this one of Little Red Riding Hood gorgeous?) of Grimm’s Fairy Tales and thousands of other books at Project Gutenberg.  If you wanted to, you could even reprint and sell the stories without paying royalties.

You can also find Hans Christian Andersen favorites like The Emperor’s New Clothes — Thumbelina — The Little Match Girl – and The Little Mermaid.

How about Mother Goose?

Or Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book?

Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventure’s In Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass?

Or perhaps your adventurous and would like to download the mysterious sounding “Pleasing Stories for Good Children with Pictures” by anonymous.

Now you may be saying, “Proper children’s books come from the store and have hard covers and colorful pictures.”  To that, I would insiste that children’s stories exist in the air. They come to life when they are told with enthusiasm.  When young minds become enchanted by the worlds the stories contain, it doesn’t matter if the words come from a printing press or your home office printer.

As for illustrations, you have a budding artist on your hands already!  Imagine how excited they would be to illustrate the story you read to them, and how much more engaged and invested in the story!  They will become collaborators rather than passive absorbers.  Their relationship with literature will be richer as they exercise their own imagination to create their imaginary scenes rather than relying on an “expert” illustrator.

Or your child could exercise their skills by coloring in Public Domain illustrations like these:

You and your child can customize your own book, make it longer, shorter, mix two stories together… You could even make it into a craft by creating your own cover and binding it. What a great gift for Grandma from the grandkids! By being creative, you can save money and teach your children a new way to interact with literature!  Happy Reading!

*UPDATE* Another “project” also offers digitized public domain children’s books: the Rosetta Project

Yuzz-a-ma-tuzz, flunnel, wumbus, squitch.  These are all Seuss words.  When we think of made up words we think of Dr. Seuss, and for good reason.  He made up a heck of a lot.  He wouldn’t just make up a word so that a phrase would rhyme, he would rhyme two made up words together!  He created wholly original instruments and toys for his “who”s to play with.

But Seuss is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to “Unwords”.  My top choice for greatest Word-Maker-Upper is Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.  Here is a snippet of his famous poem, Jabberwocky:

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

Some of Carroll’s words have found themselves adopted into everyday language!  For example, “Chortle” (a combination of “chortle” and “snort”). Carroll even invented a word (adopted by linguists) for this method of inventing words!  PORTMANTEAU:

“The original meaning of the word ‘portmanteau’ is a form of suitcase containing two separated hinged compartments; thus: two distinct words, packed as one. The word ‘portmanteau’ is itself a ‘portmanteau word’, deriving from the French compound “porte-manteau” consisting of the conjugated word porter (to carry) and the word manteau (coat), meaning a coat carrier.”  Source: Wikipedia (which is itself a portmanteau blending wiki and encyclopedia)

Other ways that I like to make up words are:

The old use-a-bunch-of-hyphens-to-make-it-all-blend-together  trick: self explanatory.

To Verb:  Take a noun (such as “verb”) and use or conjugate it like a verb.  Ex. I just verbed that verb.

Adjectivize:  Take a noun and add “y”, “like”, or “ish”.  Ex. The house was not cottagey, nor cabinlike… it was more shackish.

I could go on. If I hadn’t become an opera singing, children’s book writer, I would have been a linguist.  So I will stop myself and suggest you check out this AMAAAAZING talk by Erin McKean on Dictionaries.

Hi, everyone, it’s Jeff, and since we launched this site, I’ve gotten lots of questions like, “where do you get your ideas?” or “how did you start writing children’s books?”   I’ve spoken with many people who have always wanted to write and figure that a children’s book is a great place to start because they are so short.  I’ve also read countless blogs that say this logic just isn’t so.  I couldn’t disagree more.  Children’s books are a PERFECT place to start writing, but there are a few things I’ve found helpful to keep in mind.  Here are my TOP 5 TIPS for writing a great children’s book. 

1) Start!   Have a great idea about a flower who likes to wear plaid jackets?  Think it will delight and expand thousands of young minds?  Have you told friends at cocktail parties about this precious children’s book IDEA but it still only lives in your brain?  If you write it down, not only will you be surprised to discover that the flower has a a pet aphid that you think is even more interesting (for your next book), you’ll now be able to tell your friends at the next cocktail party that you have WRITTEN a children’s book.  You’ll be surprised to find out how many of your friends know a great illustrator or have an uncle in the publishing business when your idea becomes concrete.

2)  READ!    You wouldn’t begin to paint without ever looking at great works to find out what you like about them and what inspires you, so read a few children’s books.  You’ll probably be surprised at the variety of subjects that get tackled.  It’s not all “Berenstain Bears Go to a Picnic”.  There are plenty of children’s books that are saccharin sweet, but there are also many that are dark, funny, or informative. I even found one that taught Taoist philosophy!

3) PLAY!  One major problem with books for children is that they are written by adults.  How many motorcycle repair books are written by balloonists?  One surefire way to take all the fun out of writing a children’s book is to approach it clinically and analytically and, well, like an adult.  How many pages should it be?  What should the moral be?  Is this character or plotline to weird or strange?   Who cares!  Its fun!  Let it all out and see what happens.  Make a deal with yourself.  Allow yourself to write out everything you see in your fantasy world and only start to edit until AFTER you get to “THE END”. Very few young children are able to analyze and articulate WHY they like a book, but they can tell if the book is FUN.  If you had fun creating it, it’s likely that they will have fun reading it.

4) Trust    As I’ve mentioned, being a grown-up can mean having a well-meaning, critical eye toward your work.  We get a creative flash about a spitfire girl who takes her yellow umbrella absolutely everywhere, but we dismiss it because we started off wanted to write a story about a talking pair of rainboots.  For some reason, your subconscious isn’t very interested in talking rainboots, but your conscious mind thinks kids will like it and would make you a million in franchising rights.  The result, you never learn that it is the umbrella that talks, and you can’t get past page five of “Betsy’s Babbling Boots” because you know deep down that it’s phony.

5)  Edit   After you’ve started, read, played, and trusted, you’ve ended up with a 2000 word story about a dragon who rides a donkey because he is saving his frequent flier miles for a trip to Aruba.  Now it’s time to take those 2000 words and make them 1000.  I know, I know.  You’re thinking, “every one of my words was carefully chosen to convey the precise visual and emotional cues to the young reader.  Losing just one would be a tragic detriment to the whole.”    You’re wrong.  When we are talking and have trouble explaining something, what do we do?  We don’t pause to find the RIGHT words, we plow ahead and use MORE words.  

Antoine de Saint Exupéry, author of “The Little Prince,” once said, “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”  Given the limited allotted word count in children’s books, this should be your new mantra.