write and illustrate a children's book

...as I just can’t make it a priority right now with all the other projects I have on. BUT, I did just purchase this book from Amazon today. Looking forward to it arriving!

I have started volunteering for a local project in my area called Craigmillar Books for Babies. It is a multi-agency project which aims to encourage and support parents and carers to share books and stories with their babies and to promote reading as a relevant and worthwhile source of pleasure which enhances children’s early development.

http://www.craigmillarbooksforbabies.org.uk/

It will give me the opportunity to meet some local illustrators who may potentially give me some tips as to how to go about this goal. It’s a competitive field and I need all the help and advice I can get! I met one of the illustrators today and she was very nice. I’m volunteering again tomorrow and she will be there again too. And on Friday we will meet again along with another well known Scottish illustrator who I will get to meet for the first time. It’s very exciting!

At the moment I am just helping them set up an exhibition space to celebrate their 10 year anniversary (this Friday) but in the long run, I’m hoping to offer my illustration / writing skills for various rhyme cards, posters etc that they need.

www.helium.com the other day and decided to sign up.

It is a website for people who are passionate about writing and want to be heard. You can write about any topic you choose and then articles are compared to other articles about the same topic and then ranked to see which is the best. And the best part, you get paid for it! I’m still very new to it and have only written one article at present, but I don’t expect there to be a lot of money in it. But I like the idea that there is somewhere online where I can write down my ideas and share them with a community who has the same interests as I do. It will be great for me to get back into my writing!

In 2005/6 I completed a one year diploma in writing for young children in the hope that one day I would write and illustrate my own children’s book. I did well in the course and got some good ideas from it, but since I received my diploma, I haven’t done anymore writing! All my notes etc are in storage in New Zealand, so I don’t have access to them. This is the type of goal that is easy to put off until later. I think I need to start small with this one and work at it a bit at a time.
Step 1: Get writing. So long as I get back into the habit of writing, even if it’s just on this site, it will get me back into that routine.
Step 2: Keep a journal and write down any ideas for stories I might have. They don’t have to be much, maybe titles, or characters or situations. ANYTHING to spark a potential idea for a story.

As for illustrating the book myself, I think I will have to get a story out there first. I would like to approach publishers in the UK showing illustrations I have done in the past and hopefully, if they are good enough, get chosen to illustrated someone else’s book too! I learned through my studies that it is pretty hard for an unknown author to illustrate their own books first off. Usually publishers will team up known authors with unknown illustrators and vice versa to help sell the book.