I'm Grounded for a Year

 

Over the years I’ve been approached probably around 10 or 15 times to illustrate a children’s book, and nothing has ever come to fruition anyway.  In all honesty, it’s never been on my bucket list, but I never closed that door completely because you never know. 

 Thanksgiving before last, on the long drive to my parent’s house, out of nowhere basically, I had an image of a funny old guy setting some naughty spoiled boys straight by telling them how it was when he was growing up. In the vein of…you know how one generation tells the next, “we had to walk to school 10 miles uphill both ways…” and the Tim McGraw song “I miss back when”… and those endless posts on Facebook, if you drank from the garden hose, or played outside until the street lights came on, rode in the car without a seatbelt and lived through it, etc.  Basically a way of showcasing the drastic difference in generations and how funny that can be. That was the idea in a nutshell. So while I was driving (Paul had to come later, so we drove separately) I was scribbling on a receipt or something so I wouldn’t forget.  I’ve gotten into that habit, something I learned years ago with cartoon ideas.

 When I got back home, it went into my “ideas” folder.  Only I didn’t forget the idea, instead it kept coming back to me with new aspects. So finally, I guess it must’ve been March maybe? I was beginning to form a story. Who were these naughty boys and why were they naughty? Maybe it wasn’t naughty ‘boys’ maybe it was just one boy out of the group who wasn’t really naughty, just maybe he liked to live life in an adventurous way without rules getting in his way!

 So from there, as these ‘lyrics’ were coming to me and it was all going down in rhyme form, (which is a little odd because I’m not a poet), I was beginning to form the characters as well. And I began scanning my little world for people I knew who would fit the spirit of each character. I had the story within arm’s reach at all times. Cooking meals, while driving, lying in bed, I’d grab a flashlight in the middle of the night if I needed to, and I did several times. Changing it over and over until it made sense rhythmically, story-wise, and until I felt like it was time to put “the end” on it.  In fact, the last day of school, after we (the PTO) grilled hot dogs for the kids, I got in my van and finished it.

Then it was time to develop the characters. I now had the kids in mind that I was going to base these guys from. So same thing, I had my drawings in a bag with me at all times. I worked on it while the kids did swimming lessons, when the kids would go to the weekly library day in our little town, I would sit in the Shell station and work on it while I waited. Any free moment I had.

When school started again,  it was time to do the finals and begin to finish the ‘book’.  Before I started drawing, I asked my son’s 2^nd grade teacher to proof read it for me. She is very sharp and I knew she could correct my punctuation and grammar questions on poetry,  because sometimes you have to change words to slang to make them fit. She has been my quiet cheerleader! She really liked the story and I've shared most of the drawings with her. She has been really supportive!  It’s all uncharted territory for me, so I was keeping it on the down low.

As I was working on it, I fell in love with drawing all over again. It was a freedom I’d forgotten, that everything I drew was at my own discretion, it took a while for me to forget those barking voices in my head that might not like this or might not like that. Now that I think of it, I've always noticed when I was working on an addictive comic book between customers at a slow show, my caricatures looked better. I'll bet that's the reason, because I stop censoring myself! Ha! Finally figured that one out.

Also I love the aspect of drawing to follow my own story. And it’s really fun to base cartoon characters off of people I know because that is what I did when I was a kid, only in comic book form. Some characters were completely fabricated (although if I dig a little deeper, they really came from somewhere, someone in my life, even if I didn’t realize it before). 

Once I really got involved with it, I started to ponder the idea of self publishing. I know a handful of people who have done this, including one of my sisters ~ *the other sister has a book, but it wasn’t self published*. 

And when I could see the finish line, I started telling a few people about it and looked at publishing in the Artist’s Market, where I discovered the aspect of getting a literary agent. It was a thought that had never dawned on me. I’ve never wanted to do anything like this before. So I started looking into that and decided to try and go for it.

My first submission to an agent was last Friday. I got a quick response …and that response was a ‘no’, she was not taking submissions right now.  From doing more research, like morning until bedtime research, I learned that what I have is called an author/illustrator picture book. Which is key to know! I found another one and he said fire away! He was taking submissions. Quick response again, another no. But he said the story was charming, just wasn’t getting into my writing.

It’s amazing the vast information that’s out there, just searching for agents, I have had a huge crash course in what to do and what not to do. I thought about sending right to publishers then. After searching that out, I found that a lot of the better ones won’t take unsolicited submissions, which means that they won’t take anything that’s not represented by an agent, which means nothing from me. Also, I read of a publisher who got zillions of terrible reviews for basically ripping people off and that scared the bazooka out of me.

 I also discovered that anything that RHYMES….go figure….is almost impossible to push. And there is a very good reason for it. Because rhyming is extremely difficult to translate into other languages. Also, rhyming doesn’t always keep the same rhythm in different accents. So most agents and publishers HATE rhyming and it will even say that in their pitch, that so and so is looking for…yada yada but HATES rhyming and moralistic stories! (lol)

Searching continued and as I dove into the do’s and don’ts, I found more advice articles, so much advice. Good advice. And this new-to-me advice is helping me already shape my ideas for the next story. And guess what --- it will not rhyme!

Another thing I read was that agents can’t stand this: new writers more often than not, write a book with the intentions of teachin’ those youngin’s a lesson. That it’s usually an older wiser person who knows about life….UGH! That is basically EXACTLY what I have. It went on to say (and this makes so much sense) that kid’s days are full of adults, teachers, parents, grandparents, teaching them, correcting them, etc. A good book for a kid is when they can kind of escape that and either go to a silly fun place, or figure out that they are being taught a lesson without really realizing it.

So although it wasn’t my original intention to ‘teach those youngin’s a lesson, that is exactly what an editor or agent is going to see. And it RHYMES….oh sob! Sob!...Had I only known this, I wouldn’t have written it that way. But alas, I did. And you know what? I actually really like it rhyming so I won’t change that for this particular book.

Oh yeah, one more thing is that picture books for the younger age group like my book (6-12 year olds) should be no more than 800 words and mine is 1,023. The reason for that, I kind of figured out myself. Our kids read their own books at night, but if we don’t have much time like on a weekend night, I’ll pick out a book to read to them and the first thing I will do is find one I can read quickly. 4 or 5 pages can be the difference between a yes and a no. 

I’ve given it a lot of thought and I am fully aware of what my chances are…not very good.

However, there is always the self publishing option. So I have made a goal for myself to get the ‘dummy’... (or, finished copy…that’s lingo in ‘the biz’…**sniff** pulling up my pants a little bit…)

I’ll get that dummy as print-ready as I can. Then I’m going to send it to a total of 30 literary agents. I have nothing to lose by doing that. Oddly, the 2 no’s that I’ve gotten have not phased me, what is 28 more?

If I get nothing positive back, then I will go ahead and self publish this one. I'm just really happy with it, I have a year invested in it now, and the people I have told about this story, have mostly all asked me to please let them know when it’s done so they can get a copy.

I also want to give the kids who the characters are based upon, a copy of their own. They will floored, I haven’t even told their parents, unsure of where this would lead.

Also, I think it would be really fun to have some copies along when I do shows so I can sell them and sign them. That’s really fun for kids to know the person who wrote a book. Kind of a “you can do it” moment to teach kids, I think. So if you have found my Facebook page rather dull since fall…just pre-posting photos of live caricatures I’ve done and nothing else, I’m aware of that and I’m sorry, but this is the reason.  I’ve let everything else fall by the wayside so I could complete this book! So here we are, I apologize for this being so long,  I knew it would be. But this is what I’ve been doing and from here on out, I can post updates if anyone is interested.

Thanks for reading my lengthy writing here!