My Writing Journey
Here I am at the beginning of my picture book writing journey. Daring to step through a doorway into the world of kidlit.
I’ve always enjoyed writing. As an adult I loved writing short poems while out camping, trying to capture a moment in time I’d describe the day or our surroundings. Thunderstorms rolling through camp, what a day of crack climbing in the desert was like, or waking up to snow in late fall in one of our favorite canyons (Rifle Mountain Park). But these poems were for myself, I never thought of publishing.
Then my daughter was born, and in the beginning I would go to the used book store and buy whatever books looked mildly interesting thinking they all must be good... hmmm, nope. One of my daughter's first words was “truck,” and so, my in-laws bought us Goodnight Little Blue Truck. It quickly became one of my favorite books to read to my daughter. I loved the rhyme and imagery, and of course the amazing illustrations. One of my favorite quotes was “Clouds bump and tumble in the sky, but here inside we’re warm and dry. And all the thirsty plants below, will get a drink to help them grow.” Recognizing the scary thunderstorm was giving the plants a drink was so sweet. That connection to nature was something that I hadn't seen in a lot of picture books that we were reading.
As our baby grew into a toddler we started taking her out to introduce her to our favorite sports, and when winter came I had her on skis just after her second birthday in the spring. When I went to look for ski books to read to her I couldn’t find any! I wrote about our first days on the magic carpet, thought about how it could be a children’s book, but saved the draft and didn’t think about it again until the following winter. There I was again wishing for a book about skiing that we could read together. My original poem wasn’t set in rhyme, but I was so into our rhyming books I knew that if I really wanted to write a book for my daughter I’d want it in rhyme.
Turning my prose piece into a rhyme was fun and felt like a puzzle. I would get so excited every time I figured out how to say what I wanted and found the right word to rhyme. I read a lot about rhythm and meter, counted my syllables (and un-counted them — don’t do this!), marked my stressed and unstressed syllables, (remembering back to high school lit class) and kept at it, even adding a bit of drama to create more of a story arc. I listened to podcasts and read up on the kidlit industry, and publishing industry in general. It was refreshing learning about something new and dreaming of making it.
And here I am. One of the things that I kept seeing was that before you're even published, build a website. Again, it’s been really fun learning something new and being creative. I’ve even been able to use some of the pictures I’ve taken on our adventures to populate the site. I also thought through what I’d like to have found on an author’s website, and that’s why I’ve added a few links to inspirational web content from other parents who give great advice on teaching your kids to ski (and on getting outside in general).
When my books are published I hope that this site can serve for parents to find more books to introduce the sports they love to their kids, and in the end will inspire us all to get outside and explore more!
Picture is from the old mining town of Frisco, in SW Utah — near Beaver, UT. While my husband did a bike race, I took my daughter to explore.
