Yesterday I spent part of the morning working on the dummy book, attempting to write a complete text to accompany the pictures. In my mind, I know where I want the story to go, but it can be so difficult to transfer those thoughts onto paper. I managed to write text for twelve of the thirteen pages. However, the last page proved to be very elusive.
When writing children's picture books, I have found that every word is gold - each word has to be useful and carry the story along, or it just pulls everything down. I don't usually have my audience (children) consciously in mind when I'm working on the text. Instead, I gravitate towards stories that interest, inspire and satisfy me. Without the help and advice of Vivienne, a wonderful manuscript assessor, though, the text wouldn't be as well polished as it could be. I need an outside eye to guide the writing process and to advise on how to craft the words to sound the best.
But before I can present a manuscript to an assessor, I need to actually finished the text! I can see that the last page will take a while to emerge. I have almost finished the illustration for that page - only the facial features and background details to fill in. Hopefully it will be done by the end of this month.
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