• MY WRITING PROCESS •
MY WRITING PROCESS BLOG TOUR
Okay so this week it's my turn to take part in the ever expanding and all-encompassing blog tour about MY WRITING PROCESS.
Quite simply I receive the baton from a fellow Illustrator/writer, answer a few enlightening questions about my own writing process and then pass on to 2 or more writers.
The ever ingenious Mr Sam Zuppardi introduced me...
Sam is rapidly gaining fans and plaudits for his his debut picture book The Nowhere Box, published by Walker Books.
He has also illustrated two "Misadventures of Edgar & Allen Poe" stories and has a third book on the way.
You can check out more of Sam's creative genius here….
The first question for ME to shed some light on is …
1. WHAT I AM WORKING ON RIGHT NOW
I'm answering this whilst holidaying in Turkey. I always carry a notebook and sketchbook with me and at this very moment I have 2 of my best 4 latest PB ideas with me for development, experiment and playing with.
With the first of these I plan to write the back stories for 2 little robot characters I created a couple of years ago.They feature in an App currently available on the Apple Appstore... Beeble and Blink's first book of Colour.
Beeble and Blink are Wiz-bods and they are soon to have a life, a whole new world and at least a couple of stories to try and launch them into mainstream PB publishing.
As a contrast, my other idea features a small screech owl named Hoot.
He loses his tree, his forest home and soon finds himself in a terrible situation working night shift as a rodent catcher in a cake factory.
I'm currently sketching out key spreads and plotting the story line.
2. HOW DOES MY WORK DIFFER FROM OTHERS IN ITS GENRE
Hopefully, I guess, its the playfulness and fun, tangible characters that I've created that will make my books stand out and be memorable. Or, it could be: my punctuation!!
3. WHY DO I WRITE WHAT I DO
I feel driven to pour out ideas for picture books and have been afflicted like this since art school.
But it's only in the last 5 or 6 years with the catalyst of Scooby membership that I've realised how I should correctly deal with these ideas in order to give them the best possible chance of being published.
4. HOW DOES MY WRITING PROCESS WORK
Since I'm primarily an illustrator it's no surprise that stories pop into my head as pictures. A picture book is like a mini theatre production and it's often the key acts of the story that jump into my mind - often whilst doing some other activity like mountain biking.
Some of the spreads appear, already formed, along with accompanying words, others need coaxing out of the sketchbook.
Like Dumbledore's pensive I have to extract the better scenes onto paper and then juggle with the thumbnails until the storyline starts to resonate. That's the exciting part - when events drop into place and you realise you've got something special.
The plot line gels and you see it whole on paper becoming greater than the individual spreads.
Soooo, that's about it for me except to announce that the talented Jamie Stevenson will be giving her answers over on her blog any time next week.
Be sure to pop over there and see how she deals with things.
And Jamie is currently featured artist in Words and Pictures online magazine ...
Labels: children's books, Jamie Stevenson, My writing process blog tour, picture books, Sam Zuppardi, story
posted by Hot Frog at 3:04 pm
0 comments
